whither krita -- summary

[Boudewijn Rempt]

On Thursday 24 September 2009, enki wrote:

> >
> > flexible, comprehensive app  <---------> polish and usability
> 
> Yes, though it's not always a contradiction. Sometimes flexibility +
> comprehensive gives usability and polish (for example, the user think
> about something creative, and realise he can combine "bricks" of the
> programs and do it easily, while with another program made for a
> specific use case, he will be stuck, or will have to use very unnatural
> ways to do it).
> 
> > platform for experimentation <---------> stable application for users
> 
> I think that can be fixed with stable/unstable release and git. It's
> more a problem of workflow than of goal A lot of apps provide
> unstable/experimental plugins.
> 
> > creating images              <---------> manipulating images
> 
> I have some use cases that mix the two (texture artist, webdesigner,
> matte-painting).
> 
> > integrated in koffice        <---------> attractive to artists
> 
> I think it's a matter of education/communication. That's why I think
> hiding the programming/technology things to users is bad for most
> projects. When you give the facts to users, they use these to convert
> others users (MacOS users ? Intel Fanatics ? etc.. :p) Instead of saying
> "Krita is a part of Koffice" Let's put it the others way, You install
> Krita, and add powerful new features to it by installing others
> programs/plugins of the koffice suite. The more you install, the more
> it's powerful. I guess Koffice should be presented as a shared
> development platform (like KDE4) more than a suit of apps.

That would certainly be a solution. And KOffice itself is becoming more and 
more a collection of technologies: it's quite possible to use flake, which 
gives us vectors, without using kodocument/koview/koapplication.

> > corel painter                <---------> photoshop

That's true -- and the marketing, of course.

> They're not that different, apart from the brush engines.
> 
> > competing with gimp          <---------> competing with mypaint
> 
> Users don't like to learn a new applications, but they have new needs as
> they progress. 

That's a very good point.

> Instead of switching to another program, they will ask to
> devs to add their "missing feature".
> I'm pretty sure Mypaint will get layer support

It already has layer support :-)

> or new tool because of
> users demands (it happened with others simple sketch apps before). And
> pretty sure that Gimp will becomes a more and more a painterly app. Here
> Krita has an advantage because it has already took this path.

But we have a disadvantage, too, and that's that none of our features are 
actually finished yet.

> I'd add Video game texture artist, it is interesting because it mix
> photos, painting and make use of generator/filters.

That's one thing that I remember was mentioned in the old set of use-cases -- 
it would be cool to have that resurrected with the necessary detail.
> 
> > Can all these things work in one application?
> 
> Yes ! But the ability to save different workspaces settings may be
> needed later.

Yes, that's a long standing wish. I'm wondering whether having two apps build 
on krita/image and pigment wouldn't be an easier solutions, though, from a 
technical point of view.

> It's a bit classic, but I'd say it's a : comprehensive, powerful,
> extensible, image editor.

:-)

-- 
Boudewijn Rempt | http://www.valdyas.org