Re: GIMP 3.0.0-RC1

On 12/29/24 4:28 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Sun, 29 Dec 2024 11:24:13 -0500, -hh wrote:
 

In a manner of speaking, it doesn't really matter too much for casual
users, for most of the productivity gain is through becoming practiced
with the UI and its underlying workflow design philosophy.

 Some things are just badly designed, though.

Of course.

For example, the Microsoft Office “Ribbon” originated in the days before
modern widescreen monitors became popular. But most text documents
continue to be laid out in portrait mode. So you have this mismatch which
leads to wasted, unused space on the sides of the screen, while this big
“Ribbon” thing on the top reduces the amount of space available to show
your document.
 This is why the LibreOffice Sidebar is a better design. It leaves more of
the height of the screen available to show the long dimension of your
document.

Good example.

I had a horrific experience with a contractor using {not-MS}office
some years ago ... some glitching with the FOSS spreadsheet not
charting the project's performance data correctly ...

 Sure it wasn’t Excel? Microsoft Excel is notorious for leading users into
such errors. There are entire websites devoted to collecting instances of
such screwups.

No, I know it wasn't MS, as it became part of the evidence I had to work through with our lawyers in order to terminate their contract.  I could search the COLA archives to see if it was LibreOffice or OpenOffice, but frankly, I don't recall nor care anymore.

GIMP is basically as good as PhotoShop.

>
Again, I wouldn't know.  I've assumed that PS is better, based upon its
popularity and price.  I would expect evolving technology would favor
the payware, when it comes to outright performance.

 Remember that, since Adobe moved to the rentware model, it removed any
incentive to actually continue improving the product, since customers pay
exactly the same regardless.

That argument can go either way, but the ground truth AFAIC is that shortly after that change, Adobe reported to their stockholders that revenue (or profits?) doubled as a result of that business decision.

Which is fine, but then attempts to compare products for assessing
things like value should therefore be deferred to those who actually
have relevant experience with the tools in question.

 Too often, though, we see supposed experts who have become so invested in
their expensive proprietary tools and the companies that make them, that
they refuse to believe that something else could offer just as much power
for much less money.

A fair & balanced point which isn't particularly relevant to what gets shouted about on COLA, for on this go-around many of the longstanding "haters" are finally admitted that they have zero experience with the product that they've been so loudly critical of for so long.  To use an automotive analogy, its been like someone lambasting BMWs despite never having even learned how to drive a car, let alone a sporty one.
-hh