[haiku] Re: Would anyone like to see Tave Imagination open source?
- From: "Stephan Assmus" <superstippi@xxxxxx>
- To: haiku@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2010 13:05:14 +0200
Hi Kit,
thanks for the many kind words and the overview.
Von: Kit <kervas@xxxxxxxxx>
> 2010/10/20 Kevin Ar18 <kevinar18@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> > You know, I just noticed it... is WonderBrush a vector image editor (as
> > opposed to a bitmap editor)?
> >
>
> WonderBrush is a bitmap editor, but it has the capability of being able to
> use some vector tools.
Actually, all tools are vector tools except for bitmap objects themselves
(bitmap clippings).
> > I must admit I know little about WonderBrush.
> >
>
> As I said, it is a bitmap editor. At first glance, it does not seem so
> remarkable, and I've seen 1 or 2 people comment on some ways the interface
> could be improved.
Would be interesting to hear how exactly.
[...]
> - It can export to Adobe Illustrator. This feature is far from perfect.
These days, I consider the SVG export more important, but that one is lacking,
too, though it supports more WonderBrush objects.
> - There's an awesome feature that allows you to change the language of the
> interface without having to restart the app.
>
> Yes, just like it sounds, it changes interface language at runtime! I have
> not seen any other application be able to do this on Linux or Mac. (I have
> seen it done in Windows software, but only about one of about a hundred
> thousand apps can do that).
Not so useful, though. Most people will set one language and never look at that
option again.
> However, WonderBrush is not perfect.
> - As I said, it has an interface design which is a tad different from
> conventional image editors. It has only two menu bar entries, and almost
> zero options for configuration. Gobe Productive's Drawing module has more.
Can you elaborate on this? WonderBrush has actually seven top-level menu bar
entries, but they are not all within the same menu bar. This is just a more
consequent approach to menus. Photoshop had a popup menu in the layer floater
for ages with menu entries concerning layers. WonderBrush just takes this one
step further and combines the layer menu with the palette label, which just
saves space. I just wonder how many people mistake the tool box menus in
WonderBrush for mere labels.
It would be interesting to know what configuration options exactly you are
missing.
> - Personally, I still prefer WonderBrush's interface to the Gimp's.
> However,
> I believe better interfaces exist, like Photoshop, Photopaint or Paint
> Shop
> Pro.
>
> - The toolboxes cannot be undocked.
Can you please explain why this is useful? When you have multiple monitors, it
can be useful. When I last worked in such an environment, the awkwardness to
switch between the screens with the mouse was about ballanced with the
increased screen space for the image... For single monitor setups, floating
toolbox windows are completely useless and just in the way.
> - I have lost work to WonderBrush (or was it Haiku as a whole? I'm not
> sure so I won't give it too much heat for that)
Just recently I did some work with WonderBrush again and eventually it will
refuse to save documents. In that case I had to copy the objects to the
clipboard and paste them back over the older version of the document after
restarting WonderBrush. Pretty annoying and I have to investigate this, but I
haven't seen WonderBrush crash on Haiku to this point.
> - There is no way that I know to save selections, import or export
> filters, or some sort of plugins. (Again, I know I cannot be too demanding,
> either).
WonderBrush supports masking layers. Those are saved like regular layers and
are as powerful as selections in Photoshop but can be edited if they are
composed of the right kind of objects on the selection layer. The annoying
thing is that WonderBrush does not support a layer tree but only a flat list of
layers. So the mask applies to all layers below it. With a layer tree, the mask
could be limited to its branch of layers. That's one thing that the rewrite
addresses, btw.
> Wonderbrush is not the only image editor for Haiku/BeOs.
> There are also Refraction, Pixel32, ArtPaint, and even the Gimp, if you
> can get it to work.
Refraction does not handle transparency in filters correctly. It is very
crashy. Pixel32 is very non-native and when I last tried to use it, it
contained interface for many features that were simply not implemented.
ArtPaint is decent since it usually does not crash. However I couldn't use it
for anything but the most basic image retouching. The last time I used Gimp on
Linux, I was quickly completely lost, since stuff did not work intuitively. For
example, I tried to select a layer by simply clicking on it in the layer list.
It seemed like I could select it with the cursor keys instead. In any case I
failed to paste a selection from one layer as a new layer. I was stuck with a
"floating selection" and finally gave up...
[...]
> That said, I do support Kevin's proposal of getting Tave's application.
> Heck, not only could it promote competition and improvement, but it could
> even be that if it were to be released with a license like AGG's, Stephan
> could integrate some of Imagination's better features, or interface into
> WonderBrush.
> Or, it could be vice versa and get Imagination to grow. Or both.
>
> I believe only positive things can come out of getting new software
> available to the community, open source or not.
I agree with you there, nothing negative can come from more options. I just
find that open source graphics projects already exist, like ArtPaint which is
looking to be absolutely similar in capabilities and direction to Tave, and no
one is putting any effort into those existing projects. So why express interest
in Tave? Personally I feel that WonderBrush is doing fairly well as graphics
editor for Haiku, and that other projects such as Clockwerk would need more
attention, if anyone has some time to spare. The Clockwerk code base is even
quite decent.
Best regards,
-Stephan
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