IRC meeting

[Boudewijn Rempt]

On Sunday 26 September 2010, Silvio Grosso wrote:
> 
> Hi everyone,
> 
> > maybe more people  are interested in sponsoring the 
> development of Krita.
> 
> I hope they are :-)
> 
> In my opinion, there are three things that might possibly attract potential
> supporters.
> 
> 1. working on a Windows ".exe" self-installer. 
> The best would be to have it "portable", that is, not requiring any
> privilege, as administrator, to install it on Windows.
> Probably, the best would be having only Windows 7 as target for it. This in
> order to reduce the bugs reports :-)
> As of today, there are far too many Windows systems to support.
> On top of that, Windows 7 is probably the best system ever released by
> Microsoft :-)
> All Linux open-source software for "drawing" have a Windows version:
> MyPaint, Gimp, Inkscape, Alchemy, (Blender), Pencil, OpenOffice draw.
> Most importantly, as everyone knows, most users work on Windows ;-)
> 2. working on a manual. 
> Needless to say, it is useless to have a super-powerful software if your
> "average" user doesn't know how to use it.
> For instance, Krita has the text tool which is a bit difficult to find out
> because the other similar softwares have it on a different position :-)
> As everyone knows, Gimp and Inkscape, for instance, have both a magnificent
> documentation.
> This being said, generally, the documentation is not vastly produced by the
> developers themselves :-)
> This would be a waste of time and resources :-)

On the one hand, I like writing text and I know Krita fairly well... On the other hand, I'm already too busy as is. One thing I want to do after 2.3 is released and shown to be Good, is to approach the various publishers of books on free software applications. They might be interested in working on a paper version of the Krita manual.
 
> 3. trying to have a software which works well on pictures.
> This is by far the MOST controversial suggestion:-)
> Maybe I am totally wrong by proposing it :-)
> To make it short, in my opinion, most users work on images instead of making
> drawing.
> As a consequence, having a software which can allow them to modify a bit
> their pictures would be a plus.
> Gimp 2.8 won't allow to work on images with 16 bit color. Martin Nordholts 
> has explained that it will require 2-3 years before Gegl is fully integrated
> on Gimp.
> By modifying I *only* mean applying some very simple corrections on it
> (crop, curves tool, using levels for colour correction, and so on). 
> This, together, with the 16 bit color feature, might be enough.

Well -- that works already :-). But the workflow isn't ideal for people who have a lot of pictures to work on. But then, Digikam supports that already quite well. We do need better cropping, and the color adjustment filters we have can certainly be improved -- and should be improved, because they are used a lot in matte painting, which is one of our focus areas.

For 2.4, Dmitry and Cyrille already had the plan to improve our filter api. And the crop tool needs some ui love. Together, that should be enough for most people who want to do some touch-up.

> I am confident Krita must be totally focused in being a drawing software.
> Otherwise, Krita might become "bloated", with far too many bugs to fix :-(
> Nevertheless, Krita in the past had already most of these options and,
> maybe, it would be not difficult to improve them a bit.
> In the end, it is what every commercial software tries to do :-)
>
> I have even read that Microsoft PowerPoint (version 2010) allows now its
> users to modify a video :-) :-)

Oh my...


-- 
Boudewijn Rempt | http://www.valdyas.org
Ceterum censeo lapsum particulorum probae delendum esse