artwork project

Thomas Dodd ted at cypress.com
Fri Oct 10 14:48:54 UTC 2003


Garrett LeSage wrote:
> Thomas Dodd wrote:
>> You might find a copy of Corel's PhotoPAINT! somewhere.
>> Not too bad.
> 
> I have a copy of it.  I don't use it.  I suggest that no one else does.  
> It's a dead ex-product.

Only the linux version is dead. I've used newer versions in wine. TYhe 
latest don't work yet though.
When linux starts making inroads, I expect it'll come back. Look at the 
high end animation stuff starting to show up.

> It came with my copy of CorelDraw! for Linux -- I happened to be on the 
> beta team a number of years back, so I have a few beta copies as well as 
> the final released product.

I still have the 1st beta. Didn't find enough new bugs for the later ones:(

> CorelDraw! and PhotoPaint! are both programs which are:
>    * proprietary

So is every other commercial app. How many non-proprietary apps are out 
there for Windows or MacOS?

>    * made to run under a hacked version of Wine (they don't use
>      winelib, as promised way-back-when)

I beleive it was a timing thing. First get it working with wine, then 
switch to winelib later. Problem was lack of sales. So the whole project 
was killed.

>> Whay UI are you comparing it too?
> Any other UI.  (:
>> Have you used Photoshop on the Mac?
> Yes.  I am also familiar with most other DTP apps on the Mac as well, 
> including Illustrator, FreeHand, and Quark.

So the multiple windows that the GIMP uses are not new to you. It's 
better than one big window like Windows typically uses.

>> Many *nix /X applications?
> Yes, I've been using Linux since 1995 and also the GIMP since before the 

Not linux. Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, and Irix. The high end commercial stuff.

> 1.0 series.  I first toyed around with the GIMP back in the Motif days, 
> but Lesstif wasn't up to snuff, so most people (myself included) had to 
> use the binary build as building from source wasn't an option.  (Motif 
> was EXPENSIVE, especially for a poor college student.)  When the first 

I bought the Red Hat branded CDE, circa 98. Also tried a later, version 
after RH dropped it
>> You should try Cadence tools, or SmarTest for HP-UX for some real 
>> interesting UI's.
I ment interestin, as in poor. I have to work with them. They use 
multiple windows with no or partial app windows. SmarTest is the worst. 
It's motif, but doesn't follow any standard UI. Text defaults to 
overwrite mode, no cut or paste, and the app window doesn't access 
everything and still takes 2 pages.

> Check out GeoPak (screenshots and documentation @ 

What is it about high-end apps that makes them have hard to use, 
non-intuitive interfaces?

>> Do you have a solution for the nested menus? One long menu doesn't work.
> 
> Place the menu bar at the top instead of contextual (which adds one 
> extra level of menus), only go down one sublevel (two at the very most, 
> but rarely, if ever), weed out useless menu items, arrange everything in 
> a more sensible fashion.

Do you want each image window to have a seperat menu, or a single app 
window, like MacOS has? What are the "useless menu items"?  They were 
added for some reason. Maybe you don't use them, but somebody does.

How about a mockup of what you want? Have you talked with the developers 
about it? Did they give reasons form not changing?


> The GIMP's interface is a result of copying Photoshop's general look.  
> On the Mac, Photoshop works great.  On Windows, Photoshop is in MDI, 

Exactly. MDI is not the way to go.

> which is hideous.  On Linux, since no tool bar exists on the top of the 
> screen and MDI is a bad thing (and isn't really supported well), the 
> GIMP has windows all over the place.  The best way to cope with this is 

Push for a standardized app/tool bar then. Only if it's standardized 
will other multi window apps use it. Even then it will take time for it 
to become accepted. How many people use the top bar in GNOME? I don't 
yet. Reminds me too much of KDE. :) FIrst thing I did when it first 
showed up is turn it off and relocate the item they moved to it.

Perhaps it could be used as you tool bar? An app starts it if it's 
missing, and when no more apps are using it it goes away:)

> to either have application windows (which some apps are starting to do) 
> or to manage different applications on separate virtual workspaces 
> (which is what most people who use the GIMP actually do).

Thay's what I do with SmarTest and the Cadence tools :) Works better 
with GNOME than CDE though. Wish I could get GNOME to work on HP-UX. :(

	-Thomas





More information about the fedora-devel-list mailing list