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The Gimp

The Gimp from the Eyes of a Photoshop User 1199

Posted by michael from the eye-of-the-beholder dept.
Eugenia writes "Many in the F/OSS community are raving about the Gimp, however pros who have actually used Photoshop think differently: This Mac professional designer goes through the steps of getting Gimp 2.0 up and running on his Mac, only to get baffled by the chaotic interface in general and its non-standard UI compared to other Mac apps, its slowness to open large files and to apply filters, the unintuitive tools that accompany it and its very visible bad quality of text and lines/shapes. That designer even bought a 'supported' version of MacGimp by an OSS-Mac company, Archei, but he never heard back for his support requests (free Gimp for Macs here). I think that's one of the best-written articles I've ever read about the reality of most open-source geek-driven projects vs their equivelant professional/proprietary ones. Personally, before I get persuaded to use Gimp again for my photography projects, I would need --in addition to the author's peeves -- full 16-bit per channel support, high-quality scanning/printing drivers with integrated GUI (a'la SilverFast), and a 'crop and rotate' feature (as seen in PS/PSE). Besides, both Paint Shop Pro and Photoshop Elements cost bellow $100 (with PS Elements getting bundled with most scanners/printers/digital cameras, albeit without the much needed 16bit support either)."
Patents

JPEG Patent Could Impact The Gimp 301

Posted by timothy from the notacon-falls-silent dept.
SeanAhern writes "A number of years ago, Forgent acquired a patent on some of the algorithms required for JPEG compression and decompression, and recently sued 31 big-name IHVs and ISVs. A Newsforge article gets into some of the details and asks whether open source tools like the Gimp could be liable as well. To add fuel to the fire, the Joint Photographic Experts Group's committee thinks that some of the patent may be invalid. The p2pnet.net story mentions that the FTC has some skepticism as well. We originally talked about this on Slashdot back in the summer of 2002."
Patents

Demonstration Against Software Patents in Europe 374

Posted by michael from the fighting-the-good-fight dept.
bram.be writes "On April 14, FFII is organising a walking demonstration in Brussels against the legalisation of software patents in Europe, as well as a legislation benchmarking conference. Like in August last year, these events will be accompanied by an online demonstration whereby webmasters are asked to close their websites in protest. The reason for the renewed protest is that after the European Parliament voted for a great directive, it is now the Council of Minister's turn, whose working party proposes as 'compromise' to simply discard all good amendments and on top of that to even make program publication an infringement. Already more then 1300 sites participate in the online demonstration. Among them are some big sites like KDE, the GNU Project and the Gimp. Also, on April 15 the European Greens/EFA group is organising a Euro-LUG party inside the European Parliament, 'with a view to enhance the networking among the free software community in Europe [...], to inform the EP about what free software is, how it works and which ideas lie behind.' Speakers will include Gwen Hinze (EFF), Jon Lech Johansen (DeCSS), Georg Greve (FSF Europe and Alan Cox. Prior registration is mandatory for this event."
The Gimp

Building Gimp 2.0 on Windows XP? 53

Posted by Cliff from the why-not? dept.
Anonymouse asks: "Has anyone out there just had the urge to build Gimp 2.0 on Windows instead of using an installer made by a third party, hosted on a free web hosting service? It's probably fine but it makes me nervous, so I figure I should try building it on Windows instead...besides, it could be educational! Does anyone have any instructions/suggestions for building the source on Windows XP using MinGW and MinSYS? Keep in mind I have no experience with *nix, and my meek programing skillz only apply to Perl. Thanks!"
Graphics

Gimp Hits 2.0 637

Posted by timothy from the break-it-out dept.
jf writes "Gimp 2.0 released! From gimp.org: "This release is a major event, marking the end of a three year development cycle by a group of volunteers and enthusiasts who have made this the most professional release of the GIMP ever. It is the first stable release that is officially supported not only on Unix-based operating systems, but also on Microsoft Windows and Macintosh OS X." Get it from ftp.gimp.org or from the mirror sites."
Graphics

A First Look At The GIMP 2.0 713

Posted by timothy from the yummy dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Brice Burgess has given everyone a good peek at what's coming in 2.0 for the GIMP in his review over on NewsForge. Don't like the old UI? It's gone. All new. There have also been megawumpus improvements in the text tool. Brice says he sees some room for improvement still, but overall he is "very impressed."" (Slashdot and NewsForge are both part of OSDN.) The new text tools are a big step up, though the interface as a whole remains a love-it-or-hate-it thing.
Operating Systems

Learning Unix for Mac OS X Panther 284

Posted by timothy from the twisty-little-passages dept.
Spencerian writes "Learning Unix for Mac OS X Panther is a good tool for those who are experienced with the original Mac OS or Mac OS X, but not the Unix command line. Most of the content would not interest the traditional programmer, Linux, BSD, or other UNIX jockey, however." For Spencerian's take on why, read on for the rest of his review.
Handhelds

Full X11-Based Distro For PDAs 155

Posted by timothy from the mostly-work-safe dept.
omin0us writes "over at http://cacko.zaurususergroup.com, we are working on a Full X11 based Linux distro for the Sharp Zaurus SL-c7x0/860 series of PDAs. The screen has a usable full VGA resolution of 640x480 and the distro uses Openbox/ROX Desktop as its Native WM. But others such as Fluxbox, Afterstep, and XFCE have been compiled for it and run nicely. You will also find a WIDE variety of compiled apps in the Feed on the Cacko website such as a native GCC Compiler, XMMS, Mplayer, prboom, Gimp, Gkrellm, Abiword and numerous others. Many different screenshots of it in action may be found here. This is truly bringing desktop linux to the PDA. Also, another project that has branched from Cacko Linux is Gentoo for Zaurus. This project, at the moment is based on the Cacko X11 environment, but will eventually become a full Gentoo environment. "It can emerge packages, sync, or create Gentoo packages using the -B switch in emerge." This should be an interesting project to watch."
OS X

Review - Mac OS X Server 10.3, Part 2 310

Posted by pudge from the stare-at-the-sky dept.
In yesterday's article, I gave an overview of Mac OS X Server, and described some of the features. Read on for some detail of the specific services that Server offers, and the final verdict.
Graphics

Gimp 2.0 Pre 2 Released 67

Posted by timothy from the slicker-than-teflon dept.
Paul Kucher writes "A second preview of GIMP 2.0 has been released. From gimp.org: "Lots of bugs have been fixed since the last release and you are encouraged to try the new pre-release. It is now available from ftp.gimp.org or from one of the mirrors. Plug-in authors, please consider to port your GIMP plug-in to the 2.0 API. Now is a good time to do that." I have posted some screenshots here."
Graphics

First Preview of GIMP 2.0 Ready for Testing 563

Posted by michael from the my-precious dept.
molnarcs writes "The first preview of GIMP-2.0 is available. It can be installed side-by-side with GIMP 1.2 - so there is no need to uninstall 1.2 to test it. According to this README, some parts (gimp-perl and GAP) were removed from the main package, and will be released as separate modules. Use the mirrors listed on the homepage to download the source code. (Also available for FreeBSD via ports)." Apparently the GIMP is finally adding CYMK support, for those of you working in the print world.
GNOME

The State Of The GTK+ File Selector 701

Posted by timothy from the niggly-details dept.
Anonymous BillyGoat writes "The next stable release of GTK+ (from the 2.4x series) will have a new file selector, and of recent, a lot of activity has been going on around that. One of the GNOME artmasters, Tigert, has released a mockup of the new file selector and the GTK developers are busy working towards that. Meanwhile the people from OSNews have some other ideas, while an OSNews reader has made even better mockups."
Christmas Cheer

Santa Meets NORAD, Tux Gets Lit Up For Xmas 142

Posted by simoniker from the is-he-nearly-there-yet? dept.
runlvl0 writes "Once again, NORAD is tracking Santa Claus on his annual trip around the world via the NORAD Tracks Santa website. Oddly, as of 1900 GMT, Santa is taking a spin over the Persian Gulf. I guess that he's glad not to have to worry about "no-fly zones" this year." NORAD has been keeping an eye on our favorite present deliverer for a few years now. Elsewhere, pixelbeat writes "Michael Still created a lovely Tux in Xmas tree lights. The complete process from gimp to the final 707 lights was documented."
GNU is Not Unix

MacGimp Reviewed, Available For Easy Download 80

Posted by timothy from the beats-photoshop-on-price dept.
Kelly McNeill writes "Now that a native X Window system (X11) comes as standard equipment on OS X Panther, osViews' Kelly McNeill thought that now might be the right time to review the latest (stable) version of of the GNU Image Manipulation Program -- version 1.2.5. Gimp reviews in the past have typically either been written from a non-technical perspective -- authored by graphic artists or by software developers -- having little understanding of the needs of graphic designers. Kelly McNeill is a self-proclaimed tech geek and a working graphic artist, which makes the review all the more interesting." And Durin_Deathless writes "A new open source company, Archei LLC , is sponsoring free downloads of MacGIMP. You can download here(1)(officially) or here(2) (no personal info needed). You could also use Fink to get GIMP, but if GIMP is all want, here you go."
Printer

Printing for the Impatient using ApsFilter 50

Posted by CowboyNeal from the putting-words-on-paper dept.
BSD Forums writes "While Unix has roots in document formatting and layout, configuring printers has always required more black-arts arcana. This hasn't been helped by the appearance of low-cost commodity WinPrinters. Fortunately, tools like Ghostscript, gimp-print, and Apsfilter make configuring printers much easier. Michael Lucas demonstrates quick and dirty -- and working -- printer configuration."
The Gimp

GIMP goes SVG 370

Posted by CmdrTaco from the whats-your-vector-victor dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The GIMP developers released a new snapshot in the development series. Version 1.3.21 (aka the path to excellence release) features an improved path tool with superb path stroking and adds SVG support. You can now export your GIMP paths to SVG and the new SVG import plug-in not only renders Scalable Vector Graphics for you at the desired resolution, it also imports SVG paths as GIMP paths."
Books

Electronic Publishing Using Free Software? 41

Posted by Cliff from the be-your-own-publisher dept.
Arkaein asks: "I am planning on electronically self publishing a book that I want to write, typeset, and create diagrams for on my Linux PC. Most of the diagrams for the book will be generated through scripted custom software, and I want the final product to be as compact as possible. I would like some advice from Slashdot on what Free Software tools I should use, with an emphasis on scripting efficiency. I am planning on using hyperlinked PDF for the final book format. To date I have used LateX for writing basic papers and have created vector images using Xfig and raster images edited using The GIMP. I used dvipdfm to convert my results into PDF. What I haven't done is create a hyperlinked PDF document, or generated xfig, postscript or any other vector image format through software, or worked on any document project of this magnitude before. I have thought about using raster images, my current software used for web content similar to what will go into the book creates raster images which I convert to PNG, this works well because the images are fairly simple diagrams with few colors and compress very well. I estimate that the 200 or so images I need for my book would require about 10K each as high-res PNGs for a total of 2 MB. This sounds acceptable, but would probably be smaller with higher image quality in vector format. Are LaTeX, Xfig and dvipdfm the answers, or do I need to look in other directions?"
Games

Underground DC Developers Strike Back: Feet of Fury 185

Posted by timothy from the rance-rance-revolution-shraggy dept.
frohike writes "After reading the recent article about game non-originality, I'm pleased to say that there's another entry to the Dreamcast's innovative game lineup, and this time it isn't coming from one of the Big Publishers but the underground: Feet of Fury! This independent music beat game includes player vs player gameplay and a Typing of Fury mode. It was developed by us on a $0 budget using Linux, Gimp, and various other free tools over the past few years, and it uses the BSD-licensed KallistiOS toolkit as its base. (This is the same toolkit which most homebrew developers have written the emulators and such with.) We've used a number of neat free software technologies such as Ogg Vorbis in the game itself, and we contribute a large chunk of our code back to the community in the hopes that others can follow in our footsteps. There is even a publisher ready to help you get your ideas to fruition and sell them for you, so what are you waiting for? Now's your chance to be a console developer too. Let's make some great new innovative Dreamcast games!"

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