One feature that Reader has, and no other service I've found can match, is historical feed data.
When I discover a new podcast, I like to go back and listen to their old episodes. Reader makes this possible and easy; I can go back and look at very old articles that aren't even listed in the live feed any more.
For example, This American Life only keeps the latest three episodes in their feed; but using Reader, I can go back an arbitrary distance into the past. (I'm sure there's a limit to the history somewhere, but I'm not inclined to go looking for it.) I assume Reader is taking advantage of Google's cache in order to achieve this.
I just tried theoldreader on a recommendation above, and it also has a buffer, but it only goes back 20 episodes.
There are other similar services, but this is the killer feature of Reader for me. Very disappointed to see it go.
Someone like, say, Michael Chrighton, or Freeman Dyson, is vilified for speaking out against AGW, especially given their lack of expertise in climatology.
Al Gore, however, is treated like a hero, despite having not only no experience in climatology, but his total lack of scientific expertise, because he espouses an opinion for which there is scientific consensus.
Uh, yeah?
So Al Gore is acting (to a degree) as a spokesperson for the scientific consensus.
(Consensus based on repeatable results, not just "we all agree with that guy", by the way.)
Anyone taking a contrary position to the scientific consensus will need to have some fairly impressive scientific results backing them up, if they want to claim the majority of climatologists working in their own specialist field have got it all wrong. If you haven't got some real compelling research, and it's not even your field of expertise, then you run the risk of looking like a crank.
(I know nobody will read this being 3 days later, but I'll reply for completeness' sake.)
Lets continue to compare and contrast things that either show that you don't like how photoshop implemented a feature, or how you cannot find a feature vs. how GIMP is missing features completely.
That was kind of my point in the original reply. Most (certainly not all, but most) complaints about Gimp relate to differences in implementation rather than complete absence of capability. I knew my questions about Photoshop must have had answers (thanks to everyone who replied with tips); I was just highlighting that they weren't obvious or were frustrating to me, having come from a different application.
Gimp, as it stands, is unsuitable for professional print work. That's undeniable due to lack of CMYK and 16-bit channel support. But there's plenty of image editing that isn't destined for print publishing.
It also lacks the polish of Photoshop, and it's missing some useful tools of convenience. (Filter layers seem to be a biggie.) But for the most part it's capable of producing the same results. Given a specific image editing task, I'm confident a proficient Gimp user could produce an equivalent result to a proficient Photoshop user.
I can't seem to find the ability to create layer filters that change based on the content of the layer.
Current versions of GIMP don't have filter layers. Valid point.
(Though they are only a convenience, in that you can achieve the same effects with regular filters, just not in a non-destructive way.)
I also can't find the slice
Image -> Transform -> Guillotine.
If you want it to create the HTML code for you as well, there are several plugins you can download (eg Py-Slice).
or save for web tool. Where are the file optimization settings?
Save as -> GIF, PNG or JPG. Adjustments are in the save dialog.
Toggle the preview checkbox for lossy-compressed formats such as JPG.
How do you export as a PDF?
I'll grant you there's no built-in function for it, but I also can't conceive of a useful reason for doing so.
Converting a single bitmap image into a PDF is a grossly inefficient operation for no benefit.
(Where the file format can sensibly be exported to PDF, most open source software does provide it; eg Inkscape.)
Where is the ability to record actions and execute them on folders/files?
Instead of macros, GIMP is fully scriptable. Considerably less convenient, but much more powerful.
(Of course, in an ideal world GIMP would support both.)
How do I go to full screen with the ability to drag the canvas anywhere on screen that I want?
Uh, View -> Fullscreen? Middle-click drags the canvas.
Where is the ability to dock my tool windows?
Drag the dialog to a dock window. You get two by default: the main toolbox and Layers/Channels/Paths.
You can have one or many. Predefined sets are available under Dialogs -> Create New Dock
You actually send RGB files to print?
Another valid point. Lack of proper color control is a well-known deficiency with GIMP.
(It does now support color profiles, but it's a bit of a hack.)
I wouldn't use it for professional print purposes; but for my personal artwork, yeah, I have sent RGB for print. I've got a local print shop that does a really good job of converting screen-space color. Good enough for my needs, and it's not like my home PC has a color-calibrated monitor anyway.
Lack of CMYK support and 16-bit+ color are real legitimate complaints against GIMP. I'll grant you filter layers too, as they would be handy (and are in development). Most other complaints are just unfamiliarity with the interface.
Here are my three main gripes about Photoshop's interface:
Why is undo (ctrl-Z) single-level by default? If I'm using a tablet, one pen stroke usually ends up as multiple steps. Why do I have to hold down ctrl-ALT-Z?
Why am I forced to select something before doing most operations? If nothing is selected, surely it's logical I want to do it on the whole image.
What is Photoshop's equivalent to "Alpha to Selection", which I use all the time? (I'm sure it has one but damned if I can find it)
You can't copyright the underlying rules of gameplay.
So you can make a game that plays the same way as Tetris, Monopoly or whatever, as long as it doesn't infringe on the parts that are copyrightable (artwork, specific text wording, etc).
However, it seems you can patent any damn thing these days.
The selection itself is antialiased -- if you fill the ellipse selection, you'll get a nice smooth solid-filled ellipse.
The selection boundary, the marquee that highlights what is selected (which is based on an 50% alpha threshold of the selection), is not antialiased, because it is by definition a boundary between two pixels.
Select a rectangle. Now use the selection mask function, and fill that rectangle with a gradient. You should end up with a box containing a selected alpha gradient from 0% to 100%. (If you Fill the selection, you should get a box that blends from white to black.)
Now you decide to Stroke Selection on that box. What do you think that operation should result in? Antialiasing uses the alpha value of adjacent pixels to smooth the shape... what behavior should be defined for this example?
Gimp sets the rule that the 50% alpha threshold defines the selection marquee; then it strokes the pixels under that marquee. In this example, it outlines the 'darker' half of the box. If it tried to guess antialiasing, you'd probably get one arbitrarily blurry edge on the gradient side. How blurry? It's not exactly a stroke any more...
A selection can end up being any pattern of pixels. It could be a single ellipse, or an ellipse overlapping a rectangle with a big airbrushed stripe through the whole lot. It doesn't actually have a shape, unless you tell the Gimp to turn it into one with Selection to Path.
I don't use the Stroke Selection tool, I always Stroke Path instead; but it works for what it does. The only real problem I have with the Stroke Selection operation is they left the "antialias" checkbox there, as both tools use the same dialog. Antialias should be greyed out for Stroke Selection, as it's irrelevant.
One of my biggest gripes is that the anti-aliasing code is sloppy in non-uniformly implemented. Try this: select a circle, and then use Edit->Stroke Selection. Select a 2 pixel stroke line and go. You will get absolutely HORRID aliasing. The same thing happens (though not quite as bad) with the paint tool stroking.
That's more a side-effect of the operation you're doing, than a limitation of the Gimp. What Stroke Selection does, is literally draw along the edge of the selection boundary. Selection is a pixel-based function, so the Gimp can't (and shouldn't) make any guesses about the intended shape of the selection; it can only trace exactly what is defined. Hence, it can't reliably eliminate antialiasing, because it doesn't "know" you've selected a smooth circle -- just that there's a bunch of pixels, and it has to draw the boundary.
That's the technical reason for your problem. Now, to achieve what you want to achieve, you can use a slightly different operation.
Select -> To Path Select -> None (so the selection doesn't affect the stroke) Edit -> Stroke Path
Because the path defines a curved shape, the Gimp knows you're trying to trace a smooth line, and so can antialias properly. It's kind of elegant, because all smooth-curve operations in the Gimp are done with Paths, and you can freely switch between Paths and Selections. I use this combination all the time doing speech bubbles in my comic.
I agree with every other one of your complaints, though!:)
But if Sun Java is released under the GPL, I expect to see several more versions of Java, most of them incompatible with each other, coming out soon.
You mean, as opposed to the situation we have now, where the non-Sun implementations are 100% fully compatible across the board?
(Kaffe, Classpath, GCJ, Japhar etc)
One reason none of them use 'Java' in their name is because they have not demonstrated full compatibility.
The situation will be no worse than it is today. With an open source Java, other implementations can take the Sun source, and either maintain full compatibility & pass the test suite to use the Java trademark, or break with compatibility and work under a different name. As it stands today, 3rd parties need to implement the spec from scratch -- and either pass the test suite to use the Java trademark, or break with compatibility and work under a different name. (As no totally independent code has at this stage fully passed all tests, there are no 3rd party 'Java' implementations; only software that is mostly Java-compatible.)
By working from an independent code base, incompatibilities are actually far more likely across implementations, than if there is a common core of source they can share.
Iceweasel, anyone?
Yes -- exactly like IceWeasel. If you make changes to the codebase that are not approved by the trademark controlling body, you will have to use a different name. The brand is used as an indicator of compatibility.
This is actually kind of opposite to what you fear though; Firefox and IceWeasel will remain very much compatible, despite having different names.
What would be bad is if radically altered products were allowed to share the same name... that's where the worst problems would occur.
Your argument is not specifically against the GIMP, but holds for anything where the alternative behaves differently to your current tool:
"If the new tool is different to my current tool, the time it takes for me to learn to use the new tool is worth more than the cost of the current tool, therefore I will not switch."
And that's fine. But it's not very helpful in support for the subject:
"The GIMP will not replace Photoshop because the GIMP is not identical to Photoshop."
Even if true, that means the only tool that will replace Photoshop is something that behaves exactly the same. Which means should something better come along, it still won't replace Photoshop, because it will almost by definition be different.
Well, I don't want the GIMP to be the same as Photoshop. There are plenty of things about PS that bug me even more than the GIMP's quirks. I'm certainly not saying the GIMP is ideal either, but I quite like the way it does a number of things as compared to PS. Here's just a few:
I prefer the multi-window UI over MDI (even though most people don't). I like to be able to access all my current windows via the taskbar. (I like doing closely related tasks, like switching windows, in the same manner).
GIMP has dynamic keyboard shortcuts. If there's a commonly used menu item with an obscure (or absent) shortcut, you can assign whatever you like right from the menu. This is one of the best features of GTK, in my opinion.
GIMP has multi-level undo as a keyboard shortcut. In Photoshop, ctrl-Z toggles undo-redo. When I'm using a tablet, a quick pen stroke may mean several paint operations, and to undo it means going over to the History panel and manually paging back. (If there is an easy keyboard shortcut for this, please tell me as it really pisses me off)
In Photoshop, Wacom pens are hard-coded to have the reverse tip behave as an eraser. In GIMP, I can set both tips to be any tool I like. This is relatively minor, but it can be very convenient to just flip the pen when alternating between tools (or even different settings for the same tool).
I fully accept GIMP has its shortcomings, but even taking that into account, I am more productive with GIMP's toolset than in Photoshop. It mostly comes down to familiarity (though I could argue some of GIMP's features better lend themselves to workflow efficiency), but by your terms, Photoshop isn't likely to replace the GIMP for me:)
Thanks! If you like the art but aren't into comics, I've got a portfolio site: Studio Kagato.
I was such a latecomer to Slashdot that my usual tag Kagato (and every other name I could think of) was already taken. Ferzelic is the name of a character from an as-yet-undeveloped project.
It's fairly light-on at the moment, but I'm getting more stuff on the site all the time.
But that's just it. The GIMP does it. Just not with a simplistic and limited one-click tool.
It is literally Select Circle -> Convert to Path -> Stroke Path... or even Select Circle -> Stroke Selection, if you don't want to fiddle.
It might not be quite as intuitive as an in-your-face drawing tool, but it does exactly the same job with only one or two more operations, and is vastly more powerful and flexible. There are so many features of complex graphics programs, that some will inevitably be less obvious than others. For example, I still don't know how to do the equivalent of GIMP's "Alpha to Selection" in Photoshop, and that's something I use all the time.
It's not that GIMP doesn't do circles... it doesn't do it the way you'd like. I consider this a tradeoff between "ease of learning for new users", and "efficency of use for experienced users".
A Circle tool falls into the former, because it gives the immediate solution to one problem. A slightly different problem (draw a square) requires a different tool. Another more complex problem (draw a cresent) might require multiple tools, and end up having no obvious approach.
GIMP's Selection and Path approach is the latter; it's not necessarily immediately apparent, but once you've learned the basic process, you can apply it to many situations, and solve similar problems with the same technique.
Perhaps you'd prefer that both options are included... but if you're including circle and square tools, why not polygon? Why not arc? In fact, if some of the diagram-drawing tools are necessary, why aren't all of them required? While I would be interested in a graphics application that combined the best aspects of every toolset (raster, vector, etc), the workload in such a project would be enormous, and the GIMP developers seem to have as much work as they're willing to do already. Instead of providing just a couple of tools for corner-cases and leaving the rest in the cold, I prefer that they provide a general-purpose solution that is equally applicable to all cases.
Photoshop, among many other apps, has a bounding window-- this helps keep your workspace organized.
I personally prefer to the fact that I can access all the windows I need the same way -- from the task bar, or by alt-tabbing. Once I'm in an MDI application, I have to change to its window-switching method, and identify what documents I have open in a different way. If I've got a maximized document in most MDI applications, I have to minimize it or go to a menu to see what else is open.
Excel 2003 actually has the worst of both worlds. It's an MDI application that pretends to be an SDI application, with its default maximized documents. Each document shows up in the task bar, but if you do the logical thing and close the current window (instead of the subtle and nonstandard 'document close' button below it), it closes the whole application instead!
Photoshop has palettes that actually float, instead of getting lost behind numerous other windows.
I have a dislike for permanent floating palettes, particularly when working with images. In MDI apps I tend to work maximized, as the document frame clutters the already limited space. This means palettes are floating on top of the page I'm trying to draw on -- and unless I'm zoomed in, I often can't pan the page past them. I have to keep moving palettes around, or close them entirely (and then have to go menu hunting when I want them back). The GIMP lets me bring the document in front of the palettes when working.
There are however plenty of legitimate complaints about the GIMP GUI, but they don't seem to be the ones people usually make. It's insistence in popping up operation windows (scaling, cropping, filters etc) in front of the image, for example. I've already got a Tool Settings palette docked under the main palette; they aren't modal prompts, so why can't these things be shown there? (It looks like the development version is looking at this, but they've made some other annoying decisions, like overloading ctrl, alt & shift during selection. I'll be providing some feedback on that front...)
A draw circle tool lets you do exactly that: draw a circle. One at a time.
You can't easily use a draw circle tool to draw, say, two intersecting circles in a peanut shape, and not draw the overlap.
If you want to do that, you either have to erase it afterward by hand, or use a completely different tool, splitting your workflow.
The GIMP's approach involves a couple more steps, but is consistent for any and all shaped drawing:
draw your shape(s) using the selection tools or the path tool
if using selections, Selection to Path, then fine-tune the shape if desired
Stroke Path
I draw my online comic entirely in the GIMP. I use the above process to draw the speech bubbles in the panels. A draw circle tool would be of no use to me, as I'd still have to go through the above steps anyway to add the tail and outline.
As this sort of tool is only really useful for a single basic job, and is directly replaced by more generic and powerful tools for other jobs, I think it is appropriate that it not be included. The inclusion of such a limited tool could actually hinder new users from learning more flexible techniques.
Dimensions are in the brochure, which is linked in the Additional Product Info on the product page.
44.1mm x 88.9mm x 13.2mm
or
1.73" x 3.5" x 0.52"
Compared to the Nano:
40mm x 89 mm x 7mm
or
1.57" x 3.5" x 0.27"
So nearly twice the thickness, but slightly narrower than the Nano. Also double the capacity, much bigger screen and a built-in FM tuner (which is a $50 ipod accessory) at the same price...
"It's the Pax. The G-Paxilon Hydrochlorate that we added to the air processors. It was supposed to calm the population, weed out aggression.
"Well, it works. The people here stopped fighting. And then they stopped everything else. They stopped going to work, they stopped breeding, talking, eating. There's a million people here, and they all just let themselves die.
"I have to be quick. About a tenth of a percent of the population had the opposite reaction to the Pax. Their aggressor response increased beyond madness. They have become...well, they've killed most of us. And not just killed -- they've done things.
"I won't live to report this, but people have to know. We meant it for the best... to make people safer..."
Similarly, while the Constitution allows (doesn't require, incidentally, allows) Congress to promotethe progress of science and the useful arts it says absolutely nothing about promoting free downloads: "The Congress shall have power...To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;" If you want free downloads, create something worth downloading.
I think you're reading that backwards.
"The Congress shall have power... To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;"
ie. Congress has the power to enforce copyright ("secure... the exclusive right"), for the purpose of promoting art. As you say, this allows for (but doesn't require) copyright to exist -- if Congress chose not to exercise this power, those free downloads would be perfectly legitimate.
Art has been made for profit since the history of currency. Shakespeare, Mozart, and countless other grand masters were in it for the money.
A key point, however, is that they were paid to produce or perform their art, not for the resulting art itself.
Once Mozart's music was public knowledge, anyone else was free to perform it themselves, or have someone perform it for them.
Mozart didn't live off the retail profits of his sheet music.
Sure, $600 is quite expensive, and I doubt I'll be getting one in any hurry. but I'm not sure it's overpriced for what you're getting...
Plenty of people have pointed out that the PS3 will double as a Blu-ray movie player, and at launch it will probably be cheaper than the first round of standalone players; but not everyone cares about HD movies.
But what about the reports that:
The PS3 will ship with Linux on the HDD as standard
In addition to being a fairly radical departure from Sony's current position on homebrew (eg PSP), this could put the PS3 into a different category to the other consoles -- the potential to be a general purpose home computer, out of the box.
Sure, the PS2 had a Linux addon kit available... for about $200 extra. This got you Linux, a hard drive, a keyboard & mouse, plus a special video adapter was required so you could use a monitor. You also needed to pony up for a memory card dedicated to Linux (there's another $20 or so). Even then you couldn't access some of the basic hardware, like the optical drive, and the PS2 hardware is kind of limited for general purpose use: it only has 32MB memory and a ~300MHz CPU.
The PS3, on the other hand, will come with Linux and the HDD as standard. Any USB keyboard and mouse should work. It's got a very powerful CPU, and 512MB memory. HDMI will give you monitor resolutions (you could even use a DVI adapter to connect to an actual monitor). For that $600, you're getting the next generation Sony console, but you may also be getting quite a reasonable living-room PC as well...
This is all prerelease specs, so it may not turn out this way... but if it does, maybe the PS3 isn't so overpriced after all?
Babylon 5: Into the Fire.
Now that was a game that deserved to see the light of day.
But no, Sierra in their infinite wisdom canned it, and several other worthy games, in favour of gems like Virtual Bullrider, or whatever it was.
The freeware game B5: "I've Found Her" has picked up the mantle quite nicely, but it would have been great to see what the original team would have produced -- especially as it was an officially sanctioned project, and had original footage featuring many of the cast from the series. Sadly, all that material is now lost to the vaults of Sierra.
Laptops would essentially be useless to these kids. They cannot even word process as they won't have printers, paper or ink.
Useless? Come on.
Of course they could use word processors; they write their reports and send them over wifi to the teacher's PC. (I don't doubt faculty would also be issued with similar hardware.)
You've pointed out some of the benefits yourself in that one sentence. Some areas may not have ready access to writing paper, let alone books. What paper they might have would be treated like gold, and students would only get minimal time with whatever books they have.
However, give every student a laptop that's rugged enough to last their schooling years, and they can write and draw as much as they like. The teachers can transmit copies of the textbooks to every student. When class is over, they can actually take away the text and keep reading. You honestly can't see any benefit at all...?
Re:Seriously... Why would you use this?
on
GIMP 2.2 Released
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· Score: 1
If GIMP was not open source, would you use it? Does it have anything over Photoshop in terms of Functionality or Ease of USe?
I would, and I do. I think that the GIMP's user interface IS easier to use than Photoshop's.
Most people argue that it is counterintuitive. Perhaps it is; but mostly this means "different to the other thing I use", which is not the same thing. If you sit someone down who hasn't used Photoshop, I wouldn't be surprised if they learned the interface faster.
What's more important to me (after the first 20 minutes of using an application) is not how intuitive it is, but how efficient it is. In the Gimp, I've got the things I need to access visually in the dialogs (which I can hide behind the image window when I need more space), and everything else is directly under my mouse pointer (via a right-click). I don't have to go wandering away from the area I'm working on to find the operation I need.
The UI design of multiple windows (in Linux WMs at least) means that I can access all the dialogs directly from the task bar, the same as everything else. This is ideally suited to multiple desktop WMs. But aside from this design difference, there are little niggly things that just irritate me when I go back to work in Photoshop these days. Small touches, like being able to perform operations on the whole image without first having to "Select All" -- nothing's selected, what else did you think I meant?
The GIMP interface is flexible enough that I can streamline it for the best efficiency for me. GTK's ability to remap keyboard shortcuts on the fly, all by itself, gives the GIMP a head start in efficiency in my book.
I can't believe 100+ comments and nobody mentions this.
I think we all agree that VR interaction as presented in the early 90s was a complete crock. It is not more efficient to have to "walk" into a "room" to find stuff on your computer. And the necessary hardware at that stage was rudimentary, slow and bulky.
Forget all that other crap. Put on your VR goggles and run a system like Metisse. Run all your existing applications in windows as normal, only now you can put them anywhere in 3D space around your workstation. Have dozens of windows open at once, all easily accessible, without desktop switching.
Long webpages could be opened to full height, sticking up through the ceiling and down through the floor. Instead of scrolling, move the whole window so the area of interest is closest. Pick out interesting sections (images or whatever) in the distance before you've "scrolled" there.
I can think of endless ways a 3D window manager could be used in conjunction with VR technology, even without any specialised applications. If I could seriously set one up now, I would. I'd probably still use my CRT as a second display device (after all, I might need to show something to other people).
Realistically speaking, this isn't practical without true see-through displays. (I want to be able to see the rest of my environment behind the windows -- such as the keyboard -- and the current displays of this type, to my knowledge, use camera passthroughs which are probably a bit laggy and nauseating to use.) But I want one, as soon as the tech catches up -- assuming it hasn't already...
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously? This guy creates a TARDIS console he displays at a Maker Faire, and he is interviewed by Tim Lord?
I'm not sure if I'd prefer that to have been deliberate or coincidence...
One feature that Reader has, and no other service I've found can match, is historical feed data.
When I discover a new podcast, I like to go back and listen to their old episodes. Reader makes this possible and easy; I can go back and look at very old articles that aren't even listed in the live feed any more.
For example, This American Life only keeps the latest three episodes in their feed; but using Reader, I can go back an arbitrary distance into the past. (I'm sure there's a limit to the history somewhere, but I'm not inclined to go looking for it.) I assume Reader is taking advantage of Google's cache in order to achieve this.
I just tried theoldreader on a recommendation above, and it also has a buffer, but it only goes back 20 episodes.
There are other similar services, but this is the killer feature of Reader for me. Very disappointed to see it go.
Uh, yeah?
So Al Gore is acting (to a degree) as a spokesperson for the scientific consensus.
(Consensus based on repeatable results, not just "we all agree with that guy", by the way.)
Anyone taking a contrary position to the scientific consensus will need to have some fairly impressive scientific results backing them up, if they want to claim the majority of climatologists working in their own specialist field have got it all wrong. If you haven't got some real compelling research, and it's not even your field of expertise, then you run the risk of looking like a crank.
That was kind of my point in the original reply. Most (certainly not all, but most) complaints about Gimp relate to differences in implementation rather than complete absence of capability. I knew my questions about Photoshop must have had answers (thanks to everyone who replied with tips); I was just highlighting that they weren't obvious or were frustrating to me, having come from a different application.
Gimp, as it stands, is unsuitable for professional print work. That's undeniable due to lack of CMYK and 16-bit channel support.
But there's plenty of image editing that isn't destined for print publishing.
It also lacks the polish of Photoshop, and it's missing some useful tools of convenience. (Filter layers seem to be a biggie.)
But for the most part it's capable of producing the same results.
Given a specific image editing task, I'm confident a proficient Gimp user could produce an equivalent result to a proficient Photoshop user.
(Though they are only a convenience, in that you can achieve the same effects with regular filters, just not in a non-destructive way.) Image -> Transform -> Guillotine.
If you want it to create the HTML code for you as well, there are several plugins you can download (eg Py-Slice).
Save as -> GIF, PNG or JPG. Adjustments are in the save dialog.
Toggle the preview checkbox for lossy-compressed formats such as JPG. I'll grant you there's no built-in function for it, but I also can't conceive of a useful reason for doing so.
Converting a single bitmap image into a PDF is a grossly inefficient operation for no benefit.
(Where the file format can sensibly be exported to PDF, most open source software does provide it; eg Inkscape.) Instead of macros, GIMP is fully scriptable. Considerably less convenient, but much more powerful.
(Of course, in an ideal world GIMP would support both.) Uh, View -> Fullscreen? Middle-click drags the canvas. Drag the dialog to a dock window. You get two by default: the main toolbox and Layers/Channels/Paths.
You can have one or many. Predefined sets are available under Dialogs -> Create New Dock Another valid point. Lack of proper color control is a well-known deficiency with GIMP.
(It does now support color profiles, but it's a bit of a hack.)
I wouldn't use it for professional print purposes; but for my personal artwork, yeah, I have sent RGB for print. I've got a local print shop that does a really good job of converting screen-space color. Good enough for my needs, and it's not like my home PC has a color-calibrated monitor anyway.
Lack of CMYK support and 16-bit+ color are real legitimate complaints against GIMP. I'll grant you filter layers too, as they would be handy (and are in development). Most other complaints are just unfamiliarity with the interface.
Here are my three main gripes about Photoshop's interface:- Why is undo (ctrl-Z) single-level by default? If I'm using a tablet, one pen stroke usually ends up as multiple steps. Why do I have to hold down ctrl-ALT-Z?
- Why am I forced to select something before doing most operations? If nothing is selected, surely it's logical I want to do it on the whole image.
- What is Photoshop's equivalent to "Alpha to Selection", which I use all the time? (I'm sure it has one but damned if I can find it)
Want me to go on?You can't copyright the underlying rules of gameplay.
So you can make a game that plays the same way as Tetris, Monopoly or whatever, as long as it doesn't infringe on the parts that are copyrightable (artwork, specific text wording, etc).
However, it seems you can patent any damn thing these days.
The selection itself is antialiased -- if you fill the ellipse selection, you'll get a nice smooth solid-filled ellipse.
The selection boundary, the marquee that highlights what is selected (which is based on an 50% alpha threshold of the selection), is not antialiased, because it is by definition a boundary between two pixels.
Select a rectangle. Now use the selection mask function, and fill that rectangle with a gradient. You should end up with a box containing a selected alpha gradient from 0% to 100%. (If you Fill the selection, you should get a box that blends from white to black.)
Now you decide to Stroke Selection on that box. What do you think that operation should result in?
Antialiasing uses the alpha value of adjacent pixels to smooth the shape... what behavior should be defined for this example?
Gimp sets the rule that the 50% alpha threshold defines the selection marquee; then it strokes the pixels under that marquee. In this example, it outlines the 'darker' half of the box. If it tried to guess antialiasing, you'd probably get one arbitrarily blurry edge on the gradient side. How blurry? It's not exactly a stroke any more...
A selection can end up being any pattern of pixels. It could be a single ellipse, or an ellipse overlapping a rectangle with a big airbrushed stripe through the whole lot. It doesn't actually have a shape, unless you tell the Gimp to turn it into one with Selection to Path.
I don't use the Stroke Selection tool, I always Stroke Path instead; but it works for what it does. The only real problem I have with the Stroke Selection operation is they left the "antialias" checkbox there, as both tools use the same dialog. Antialias should be greyed out for Stroke Selection, as it's irrelevant.
That's more a side-effect of the operation you're doing, than a limitation of the Gimp.
What Stroke Selection does, is literally draw along the edge of the selection boundary. Selection is a pixel-based function, so the Gimp can't (and shouldn't) make any guesses about the intended shape of the selection; it can only trace exactly what is defined. Hence, it can't reliably eliminate antialiasing, because it doesn't "know" you've selected a smooth circle -- just that there's a bunch of pixels, and it has to draw the boundary.
That's the technical reason for your problem.
Now, to achieve what you want to achieve, you can use a slightly different operation.
Select -> To Path
Select -> None (so the selection doesn't affect the stroke)
Edit -> Stroke Path
Because the path defines a curved shape, the Gimp knows you're trying to trace a smooth line, and so can antialias properly.
It's kind of elegant, because all smooth-curve operations in the Gimp are done with Paths, and you can freely switch between Paths and Selections. I use this combination all the time doing speech bubbles in my comic.
I agree with every other one of your complaints, though!
You mean, as opposed to the situation we have now, where the non-Sun implementations are 100% fully compatible across the board?
(Kaffe, Classpath, GCJ, Japhar etc)
One reason none of them use 'Java' in their name is because they have not demonstrated full compatibility.
The situation will be no worse than it is today. With an open source Java, other implementations can take the Sun source, and either maintain full compatibility & pass the test suite to use the Java trademark, or break with compatibility and work under a different name. As it stands today, 3rd parties need to implement the spec from scratch -- and either pass the test suite to use the Java trademark, or break with compatibility and work under a different name. (As no totally independent code has at this stage fully passed all tests, there are no 3rd party 'Java' implementations; only software that is mostly Java-compatible.)
By working from an independent code base, incompatibilities are actually far more likely across implementations, than if there is a common core of source they can share.
Yes -- exactly like IceWeasel. If you make changes to the codebase that are not approved by the trademark controlling body, you will have to use a different name. The brand is used as an indicator of compatibility.
This is actually kind of opposite to what you fear though; Firefox and IceWeasel will remain very much compatible, despite having different names.
What would be bad is if radically altered products were allowed to share the same name... that's where the worst problems would occur.
Your argument is not specifically against the GIMP, but holds for anything where the alternative behaves differently to your current tool:
"If the new tool is different to my current tool, the time it takes for me to learn to use the new tool is worth more than the cost of the current tool, therefore I will not switch."
And that's fine. But it's not very helpful in support for the subject:
"The GIMP will not replace Photoshop because the GIMP is not identical to Photoshop."
Even if true, that means the only tool that will replace Photoshop is something that behaves exactly the same. Which means should something better come along, it still won't replace Photoshop, because it will almost by definition be different.
Well, I don't want the GIMP to be the same as Photoshop. There are plenty of things about PS that bug me even more than the GIMP's quirks. I'm certainly not saying the GIMP is ideal either, but I quite like the way it does a number of things as compared to PS. Here's just a few:
I fully accept GIMP has its shortcomings, but even taking that into account, I am more productive with GIMP's toolset than in Photoshop. It mostly comes down to familiarity (though I could argue some of GIMP's features better lend themselves to workflow efficiency), but by your terms, Photoshop isn't likely to replace the GIMP for me :)
Thanks! If you like the art but aren't into comics, I've got a portfolio site: Studio Kagato.
I was such a latecomer to Slashdot that my usual tag Kagato (and every other name I could think of) was already taken. Ferzelic is the name of a character from an as-yet-undeveloped project.
It's fairly light-on at the moment, but I'm getting more stuff on the site all the time.
But that's just it. The GIMP does it. Just not with a simplistic and limited one-click tool.
It is literally Select Circle -> Convert to Path -> Stroke Path... or even Select Circle -> Stroke Selection, if you don't want to fiddle.
It might not be quite as intuitive as an in-your-face drawing tool, but it does exactly the same job with only one or two more operations, and is vastly more powerful and flexible. There are so many features of complex graphics programs, that some will inevitably be less obvious than others. For example, I still don't know how to do the equivalent of GIMP's "Alpha to Selection" in Photoshop, and that's something I use all the time.
It's not that GIMP doesn't do circles... it doesn't do it the way you'd like. I consider this a tradeoff between "ease of learning for new users", and "efficency of use for experienced users".
A Circle tool falls into the former, because it gives the immediate solution to one problem. A slightly different problem (draw a square) requires a different tool. Another more complex problem (draw a cresent) might require multiple tools, and end up having no obvious approach.
GIMP's Selection and Path approach is the latter; it's not necessarily immediately apparent, but once you've learned the basic process, you can apply it to many situations, and solve similar problems with the same technique.
Perhaps you'd prefer that both options are included... but if you're including circle and square tools, why not polygon? Why not arc? In fact, if some of the diagram-drawing tools are necessary, why aren't all of them required? While I would be interested in a graphics application that combined the best aspects of every toolset (raster, vector, etc), the workload in such a project would be enormous, and the GIMP developers seem to have as much work as they're willing to do already. Instead of providing just a couple of tools for corner-cases and leaving the rest in the cold, I prefer that they provide a general-purpose solution that is equally applicable to all cases.
I personally prefer to the fact that I can access all the windows I need the same way -- from the task bar, or by alt-tabbing. Once I'm in an MDI application, I have to change to its window-switching method, and identify what documents I have open in a different way. If I've got a maximized document in most MDI applications, I have to minimize it or go to a menu to see what else is open.
Excel 2003 actually has the worst of both worlds. It's an MDI application that pretends to be an SDI application, with its default maximized documents. Each document shows up in the task bar, but if you do the logical thing and close the current window (instead of the subtle and nonstandard 'document close' button below it), it closes the whole application instead!
I have a dislike for permanent floating palettes, particularly when working with images. In MDI apps I tend to work maximized, as the document frame clutters the already limited space. This means palettes are floating on top of the page I'm trying to draw on -- and unless I'm zoomed in, I often can't pan the page past them. I have to keep moving palettes around, or close them entirely (and then have to go menu hunting when I want them back). The GIMP lets me bring the document in front of the palettes when working.
There are however plenty of legitimate complaints about the GIMP GUI, but they don't seem to be the ones people usually make. It's insistence in popping up operation windows (scaling, cropping, filters etc) in front of the image, for example. I've already got a Tool Settings palette docked under the main palette; they aren't modal prompts, so why can't these things be shown there? (It looks like the development version is looking at this, but they've made some other annoying decisions, like overloading ctrl, alt & shift during selection. I'll be providing some feedback on that front...)
A draw circle tool lets you do exactly that: draw a circle. One at a time.
You can't easily use a draw circle tool to draw, say, two intersecting circles in a peanut shape, and not draw the overlap.
If you want to do that, you either have to erase it afterward by hand, or use a completely different tool, splitting your workflow.
The GIMP's approach involves a couple more steps, but is consistent for any and all shaped drawing:
I draw my online comic entirely in the GIMP. I use the above process to draw the speech bubbles in the panels. A draw circle tool would be of no use to me, as I'd still have to go through the above steps anyway to add the tail and outline.
As this sort of tool is only really useful for a single basic job, and is directly replaced by more generic and powerful tools for other jobs, I think it is appropriate that it not be included. The inclusion of such a limited tool could actually hinder new users from learning more flexible techniques.
Dimensions are in the brochure, which is linked in the Additional Product Info on the product page.
44.1mm x 88.9mm x 13.2mm
Compared to the Nano:or
1.73" x 3.5" x 0.52"
40mm x 89 mm x 7mm
or
1.57" x 3.5" x 0.27"
So nearly twice the thickness, but slightly narrower than the Nano. Also double the capacity, much bigger screen and a built-in FM tuner (which is a $50 ipod accessory) at the same price...
"It's the Pax. The G-Paxilon Hydrochlorate that we added to the air processors. It was supposed to calm the population, weed out aggression.
"Well, it works. The people here stopped fighting. And then they stopped everything else. They stopped going to work, they stopped breeding, talking, eating. There's a million people here, and they all just let themselves die.
"I have to be quick. About a tenth of a percent of the population had the opposite reaction to the Pax. Their aggressor response increased beyond madness. They have become...well, they've killed most of us. And not just killed -- they've done things.
"I won't live to report this, but people have to know. We meant it for the best... to make people safer..."
I think you're reading that backwards. ... To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;"
"The Congress shall have power
ie. Congress has the power to enforce copyright ("secure ... the exclusive right"), for the purpose of promoting art. As you say, this allows for (but doesn't require) copyright to exist -- if Congress chose not to exercise this power, those free downloads would be perfectly legitimate.
Art has been made for profit since the history of currency. Shakespeare, Mozart, and countless other grand masters were in it for the money.
A key point, however, is that they were paid to produce or perform their art, not for the resulting art itself.
Once Mozart's music was public knowledge, anyone else was free to perform it themselves, or have someone perform it for them.
Mozart didn't live off the retail profits of his sheet music.
Sure, $600 is quite expensive, and I doubt I'll be getting one in any hurry. but I'm not sure it's overpriced for what you're getting...
Plenty of people have pointed out that the PS3 will double as a Blu-ray movie player, and at launch it will probably be cheaper than the first round of standalone players; but not everyone cares about HD movies.
But what about the reports that:In addition to being a fairly radical departure from Sony's current position on homebrew (eg PSP), this could put the PS3 into a different category to the other consoles -- the potential to be a general purpose home computer, out of the box.
Sure, the PS2 had a Linux addon kit available... for about $200 extra. This got you Linux, a hard drive, a keyboard & mouse, plus a special video adapter was required so you could use a monitor. You also needed to pony up for a memory card dedicated to Linux (there's another $20 or so). Even then you couldn't access some of the basic hardware, like the optical drive, and the PS2 hardware is kind of limited for general purpose use: it only has 32MB memory and a ~300MHz CPU.
The PS3, on the other hand, will come with Linux and the HDD as standard. Any USB keyboard and mouse should work. It's got a very powerful CPU, and 512MB memory. HDMI will give you monitor resolutions (you could even use a DVI adapter to connect to an actual monitor). For that $600, you're getting the next generation Sony console, but you may also be getting quite a reasonable living-room PC as well...
This is all prerelease specs, so it may not turn out this way... but if it does, maybe the PS3 isn't so overpriced after all?
Babylon 5: Into the Fire.
Now that was a game that deserved to see the light of day.
But no, Sierra in their infinite wisdom canned it, and several other worthy games, in favour of gems like Virtual Bullrider, or whatever it was.
The freeware game B5: "I've Found Her" has picked up the mantle quite nicely, but it would have been great to see what the original team would have produced -- especially as it was an officially sanctioned project, and had original footage featuring many of the cast from the series. Sadly, all that material is now lost to the vaults of Sierra.
Laptops would essentially be useless to these kids. They cannot even word process as they won't have printers, paper or ink.
Useless? Come on.
Of course they could use word processors; they write their reports and send them over wifi to the teacher's PC. (I don't doubt faculty would also be issued with similar hardware.)
You've pointed out some of the benefits yourself in that one sentence. Some areas may not have ready access to writing paper, let alone books. What paper they might have would be treated like gold, and students would only get minimal time with whatever books they have.
However, give every student a laptop that's rugged enough to last their schooling years, and they can write and draw as much as they like. The teachers can transmit copies of the textbooks to every student. When class is over, they can actually take away the text and keep reading. You honestly can't see any benefit at all...?
I would, and I do. I think that the GIMP's user interface IS easier to use than Photoshop's.
Most people argue that it is counterintuitive. Perhaps it is; but mostly this means "different to the other thing I use", which is not the same thing. If you sit someone down who hasn't used Photoshop, I wouldn't be surprised if they learned the interface faster.
What's more important to me (after the first 20 minutes of using an application) is not how intuitive it is, but how efficient it is. In the Gimp, I've got the things I need to access visually in the dialogs (which I can hide behind the image window when I need more space), and everything else is directly under my mouse pointer (via a right-click). I don't have to go wandering away from the area I'm working on to find the operation I need.
The UI design of multiple windows (in Linux WMs at least) means that I can access all the dialogs directly from the task bar, the same as everything else. This is ideally suited to multiple desktop WMs. But aside from this design difference, there are little niggly things that just irritate me when I go back to work in Photoshop these days. Small touches, like being able to perform operations on the whole image without first having to "Select All" -- nothing's selected, what else did you think I meant?
The GIMP interface is flexible enough that I can streamline it for the best efficiency for me. GTK's ability to remap keyboard shortcuts on the fly, all by itself, gives the GIMP a head start in efficiency in my book.
Yeah, but wouldn't it be cool if you were?
Action, Adventure and Mystery in Doctor Ether and the Journey to the Hollow Earth!
I think my parents had some of their albums...
I think we all agree that VR interaction as presented in the early 90s was a complete crock. It is not more efficient to have to "walk" into a "room" to find stuff on your computer. And the necessary hardware at that stage was rudimentary, slow and bulky.
Forget all that other crap. Put on your VR goggles and run a system like Metisse. Run all your existing applications in windows as normal, only now you can put them anywhere in 3D space around your workstation. Have dozens of windows open at once, all easily accessible, without desktop switching.
Long webpages could be opened to full height, sticking up through the ceiling and down through the floor. Instead of scrolling, move the whole window so the area of interest is closest. Pick out interesting sections (images or whatever) in the distance before you've "scrolled" there.
I can think of endless ways a 3D window manager could be used in conjunction with VR technology, even without any specialised applications. If I could seriously set one up now, I would. I'd probably still use my CRT as a second display device (after all, I might need to show something to other people).
Realistically speaking, this isn't practical without true see-through displays. (I want to be able to see the rest of my environment behind the windows -- such as the keyboard -- and the current displays of this type, to my knowledge, use camera passthroughs which are probably a bit laggy and nauseating to use.) But I want one, as soon as the tech catches up -- assuming it hasn't already...