I see it as the opposite. If I work with a computer anyway, and assuming I'm not confined to the company's office, why shouldn't I at least be able to do it outside, enjoying the sun and fresh hair?
Exactly. There's a nicely landscaped grassy area outside my office. If I was doing something paper based I could go out there and work on a fine day. With a suitable screen and WiFi, I could work on my laptop out there.
With my current standard laptop screen, I can't do that. I can't even sit and work in my conservatory at home if the sun's out.
However, I wasn't suggesting that every image-editing user should learn Script-Fu; more that SF provides a convenient scripting framework so that it's easy for any hack that wants to plug in certain kinds of missing functionality, to do so -- and provide it to everyone else.
If that's not happening, it suggests one of three possibilities: 1. People with coding skills are generally not interested in image editing 2. People with coding skills generally do not perceive any gaping holes in GIMP 3. People with coding skills are using more code-centric workflow to achieve the results that non-coders would achieve with these missing features.
Comparing Gimp and PS on simple tasks such as overlaying a couple of images is like taking a Lamborghini Gallardo out to the local corner store and back at 25mph and then claiming it performs just as well as your used Toyota Yaris.
It is. And yet many people own a Yaris, who would get no benefit from spending vast amounts of extra money on the Lamborghini.
I use GIMP any time I need to work with composite images.
That's nice. Do you often work with 20 and 30 layer images? No?
Seldom, but I was responding to someone who said they would "rather gouge their eyes out than use the GIMP for even the simplest of tasks".
However, how often does a local paper need to work with 20 layer images? When my local paper has a photo of the mayor opening a school, I don't want anything done to it but cropping and level correction.
The GIMP is capable of much more than this of course.
i.e., the Free Software Foundation preceded the Open Source Initiative. It required a lot of effort by people who, because of an ethical commitment, were willing to put up with software that wasn't as good as proprietary software, before you had a foundation of software that, as it turned out, worked better than proprietary software.
I think it's a bit more nuanced than that, because RMS's ethical stance was inspired by very pragmatic concerns. The story goes that at MIT, he felt that it would be useful to get an email when your print job was ready to collect. He set about finding the source for the print driver, so he could hack in this simple feature, and was astonished to discover that it wasn't available, and they wouldn't give it to him.
The ethical position is a pragmatic position -- how can we make our software better, if we're not provided with the means to modify it?
It's supported layers for as long as I can remember.
In fact, one objection might be that you can't use it effectively without first understanding layers.
Not sure what you mean by fine control of selections - adjusting a selection can be a bit hit and miss, but I blame that on my working on large images on an underpowered machine.
I'm a huge FOSS fanboy but I'd rather gouge my eyes out than use the GIMP for even the simplest of tasks.
Really? Why?
I use GIMP any time I need to work with composite images. I've learned how to use it. I'm perfectly happy with it. I am lost in Photoshop, because that's not the interface I've learned.
Everyone's thinking about desktops; maybe that's not the target market.
Think info displays in railway stations etc. Think multimedia displays in bars and clubs. Think art installations. Think information status displays for monitoring. Think information radiators for agile dev teams.
There's all kinds of situations where it is very useful to drive lots and lots of monitors from one machine.
Compatible file-formats? What is not compatible with AAC these days?
Go to a supermarket and pick the first $30 MP3 playing USB stick you see on the shelf. I doubt it'll play AAC. In the unlikely event it does, I especially doubt it'll play AACs bought on iTunes before they dropped DRM.
But after it takes you 3 years to get everyone on Google, set up, working right (damned ad-block), etc. and THEN you can start working together -- oh, but wait, half the people don't know how to use Wave, so you have to teach them how to use it -- yes, dammit, it's more than just IM, it's all sorts of...oh, read the docs, won't you? -- THEN you can finally get down to working on the pro....
I had the same issues trying to bootstrap the use of staff email at a high school in the late 1990s.
Of course, nowadays you'd have a hard time finding an email naysayer. People know what it's good for, know what it's bad for, and use it accordingly.
This is one of the problems with the freedoms that the computer revolution has given us. Anyone can design a book, or notate a page of music -- but can they do it WELL? Technology is sadly, no substitute for talent.
I'm totally with you on this, but again, the question is how many people care?
I think if you gave them a side by side comparison of LaTeX output vs Word output, most people would see that the LaTeX output was "nicer" for reasons they couldn't put their finger on.
But if you printed a book from Word and gave it to arbitrary people to read, what proportion would say "sorry, this is too ugly and difficult to read"?
Broadly on-topic, I've been trying, and failing, to find OSS software that makes it easy to produce song sheets with time sigs, lyrics, chord letters and bar lines and little else.
Basically something easier to use and better looking than producing ASCII art thus:
4 |.C.....................|.G..........| 4 |.Hello darkness my old | friend.....|
(dots because/. collapses whitespace)
The closest I've found is MuseScore, but this *requires* you to have a note for each lyric.
- What proportion of users really care about the finesse of the layout? Most people are happy with MS Word's typesetting, and don't really notice the improvement in a TeX typeset document, for example. I've been using the OSS "MuseScore" editor, and I'm perfectly happy with the layout (less so about usability). - Javascript is not your first choice. What language would be? I suspect, for the layout part, functional programming would be perfect -- for a programmer who's grokked FP. JS can be used in a purely FP manner, if the programmer chooses.
Let's face facts. The BNP put its leader up in an East London constituency where it only narrowly lost last time around and where it had 12 local councillors voted in. The leader scraped home in 3rd place. All the BNP councillors were voted off. There is not a single constituency in the whole of the UK where the voters thought - 'yes, the BNP or UKIP candidate is the best one'.
... but the electorate in Barking had a fright with the last council elections, there was vigorous anti-BNP campaigning, and as a result thousands voted tactically rather than risk splitting the non-BNP vote.
Under a proportional voting system, these people could have voted for their first choice, safe in the knowledge that the system would also account for their non-preference for the BNP.
That would mean that back bench Labour MPs that would appear towards the bottom of the party list would lose their jobs. I don't think they would vote for that.
(1) We don't know that Party List would be the new system that's proposed. The LDs manifesto prefers STV, for example. (2) Some MPs actually vote on their principles, rather than to protect their job. (3) Their vote only means so much anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
is the ipad a particularly good screen in direct sunlight, or was it just an excuse to mention your "famed ipad" ?
I think the iPad is advertised as being usable in daylight.
I see it as the opposite. If I work with a computer anyway, and assuming I'm not confined to the company's office, why shouldn't I at least be able to do it outside, enjoying the sun and fresh hair?
Exactly. There's a nicely landscaped grassy area outside my office. If I was doing something paper based I could go out there and work on a fine day. With a suitable screen and WiFi, I could work on my laptop out there.
With my current standard laptop screen, I can't do that. I can't even sit and work in my conservatory at home if the sun's out.
Fine, if it's something Script-Fu can't address.
However, I wasn't suggesting that every image-editing user should learn Script-Fu; more that SF provides a convenient scripting framework so that it's easy for any hack that wants to plug in certain kinds of missing functionality, to do so -- and provide it to everyone else.
If that's not happening, it suggests one of three possibilities:
1. People with coding skills are generally not interested in image editing
2. People with coding skills generally do not perceive any gaping holes in GIMP
3. People with coding skills are using more code-centric workflow to achieve the results that non-coders would achieve with these missing features.
Comparing Gimp and PS on simple tasks such as overlaying a couple of images is like taking a Lamborghini Gallardo out to the local corner store and back at 25mph and then claiming it performs just as well as your used Toyota Yaris.
It is. And yet many people own a Yaris, who would get no benefit from spending vast amounts of extra money on the Lamborghini.
I wouldn't use GIMP for drawing things any more than I would use Powerpoint for that purpose.
I use GIMP any time I need to work with composite images.
That's nice. Do you often work with 20 and 30 layer images? No?
Seldom, but I was responding to someone who said they would "rather gouge their eyes out than use the GIMP for even the simplest of tasks".
However, how often does a local paper need to work with 20 layer images? When my local paper has a photo of the mayor opening a school, I don't want anything done to it but cropping and level correction.
The GIMP is capable of much more than this of course.
i.e., the Free Software Foundation preceded the Open Source Initiative. It required a lot of effort by people who, because of an ethical commitment, were willing to put up with software that wasn't as good as proprietary software, before you had a foundation of software that, as it turned out, worked better than proprietary software.
I think it's a bit more nuanced than that, because RMS's ethical stance was inspired by very pragmatic concerns. The story goes that at MIT, he felt that it would be useful to get an email when your print job was ready to collect. He set about finding the source for the print driver, so he could hack in this simple feature, and was astonished to discover that it wasn't available, and they wouldn't give it to him.
The ethical position is a pragmatic position -- how can we make our software better, if we're not provided with the means to modify it?
I'm not GIMP expert, but I just opened it up, created a path using Bezier curves, then created a selection based on the path.
It's supported layers for as long as I can remember.
In fact, one objection might be that you can't use it effectively without first understanding layers.
Not sure what you mean by fine control of selections - adjusting a selection can be a bit hit and miss, but I blame that on my working on large images on an underpowered machine.
I'd love to hear some examples -- because again, GIMP is all I know.
It seems to me that any functionality and interoperability missing from GIMP could be addressed with Script-Fu
Great, I'll just go and make my fork...
I'm a huge FOSS fanboy but I'd rather gouge my eyes out than use the GIMP for even the simplest of tasks.
Really? Why?
I use GIMP any time I need to work with composite images. I've learned how to use it. I'm perfectly happy with it. I am lost in Photoshop, because that's not the interface I've learned.
Everyone's thinking about desktops; maybe that's not the target market.
Think info displays in railway stations etc.
Think multimedia displays in bars and clubs.
Think art installations.
Think information status displays for monitoring.
Think information radiators for agile dev teams.
There's all kinds of situations where it is very useful to drive lots and lots of monitors from one machine.
Compatible file-formats? What is not compatible with AAC these days?
Go to a supermarket and pick the first $30 MP3 playing USB stick you see on the shelf. I doubt it'll play AAC. In the unlikely event it does, I especially doubt it'll play AACs bought on iTunes before they dropped DRM.
Don't compare iTunes to searching on Windows.
Compare iTunes to a hypothetical tool that's actually good. Let's have some ambition here!
But after it takes you 3 years to get everyone on Google, set up, working right (damned ad-block), etc. and THEN you can start working together -- oh, but wait, half the people don't know how to use Wave, so you have to teach them how to use it -- yes, dammit, it's more than just IM, it's all sorts of...oh, read the docs, won't you? -- THEN you can finally get down to working on the pro....
I had the same issues trying to bootstrap the use of staff email at a high school in the late 1990s.
Of course, nowadays you'd have a hard time finding an email naysayer. People know what it's good for, know what it's bad for, and use it accordingly.
...and still just as useless. Well, ok -- non-realtime collaborative efforts, perhaps. Brainstormings. Things like that.
You mean it's useless, except for the things it's made for?
I installed Lilypond a while ago, but I couldn't find a way to produce bars, lyrics and chords without a stave.
It's entirely likely that's my failing not the software's.
Ms Word does typesetting? Ha Ha Ha.
This is one of the problems with the freedoms that the computer revolution has given us. Anyone can design a book, or notate a page of music -- but can they do it WELL? Technology is sadly, no substitute for talent.
I'm totally with you on this, but again, the question is how many people care?
I think if you gave them a side by side comparison of LaTeX output vs Word output, most people would see that the LaTeX output was "nicer" for reasons they couldn't put their finger on.
But if you printed a book from Word and gave it to arbitrary people to read, what proportion would say "sorry, this is too ugly and difficult to read"?
Broadly on-topic, I've been trying, and failing, to find OSS software that makes it easy to produce song sheets with time sigs, lyrics, chord letters and bar lines and little else.
Basically something easier to use and better looking than producing ASCII art thus:
4 |.C.....................|.G..........|
4 |.Hello darkness my old | friend.....|
(dots because /. collapses whitespace)
The closest I've found is MuseScore, but this *requires* you to have a note for each lyric.
Interesting post. A couple of questions:
- What proportion of users really care about the finesse of the layout? Most people are happy with MS Word's typesetting, and don't really notice the improvement in a TeX typeset document, for example. I've been using the OSS "MuseScore" editor, and I'm perfectly happy with the layout (less so about usability).
- Javascript is not your first choice. What language would be? I suspect, for the layout part, functional programming would be perfect -- for a programmer who's grokked FP. JS can be used in a purely FP manner, if the programmer chooses.
the mess that is HTML
To be fair, the "HTML" is pretty much limited to one <canvas> element and one <script> element.
The only remaining cruft is Javascript, which readers of Crockford et al. know *can* be used to produce beautiful well structured code.
It shouldn't be a surprise that the well-specified Canvas element allows people to do this kind of thing.
But why not celebrate when it happens? I'm happy that music notation can be displayed in a browser in a better way than transmitting large bitmaps.
It's a demo of the rendering engine. Those are not screen shots. What you're seeing is canvas elements drawn on by JS.
It doesn't look as if he's done interactivity yet.
Not disagreeing with this:
Let's face facts. The BNP put its leader up in an East London constituency where it only narrowly lost last time around and where it had 12 local councillors voted in. The leader scraped home in 3rd place. All the BNP councillors were voted off. There is not a single constituency in the whole of the UK where the voters thought - 'yes, the BNP or UKIP candidate is the best one'.
... but the electorate in Barking had a fright with the last council elections, there was vigorous anti-BNP campaigning, and as a result thousands voted tactically rather than risk splitting the non-BNP vote.
Under a proportional voting system, these people could have voted for their first choice, safe in the knowledge that the system would also account for their non-preference for the BNP.
That would mean that back bench Labour MPs that would appear towards the bottom of the party list would lose their jobs. I don't think they would vote for that.
(1) We don't know that Party List would be the new system that's proposed. The LDs manifesto prefers STV, for example.
(2) Some MPs actually vote on their principles, rather than to protect their job.
(3) Their vote only means so much anyway.