Re: Linux Photoshop

Floyd L. Davidson wrote:

"J. Clarke" <jclarke.usenet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Floyd L. Davidson wrote:

And at that point it might be a viable software package for me to use.
Until then it isn't. It's like when people point out some comand line
linux software for doing certain things, maybe if I was a programmer it
wouldn't bother me but I'm not interested in working that way.

You really should stick with Windows. Let programmers decide
what you are able to do...

They do anyway.

Programmers do decide... if you choose a single "do everything"
program; and typically that is the way Windows software is
designed but is not the philosophy that unix software is usually
based on.

(All of which is an odd twist of fate that is based on history.
UNIX was developed in the early 70's, when a machine with 64K of
RAM costs a quarter of a million bucks. The idea was to develop
an interactive time sharing system as opposed to a batch
processing system. Hence small tools, one for each task, would
allow space for more users. Windows was based on MS-DOS, which
was a single user program loader, not an OS proper. Each
program ran alone, entirely on its own and had control of
*everything*. Today each of those OS's pretty much acts as if
it were still doing what they were originally designed to do,
except of course now we have gigabytes of RAM and terabytes of
disk space!)

Unix software packages tend to limit each program to doing one
specific thing. Several programs, each of which accomplishes a
different part of what the user wants, typically work in
cooperation for any given software "application". The user has
the option to reconfigure how these programs are arranged and
interact, often putting together combinations that accomplish
things never imagined by the programmers who wrote the programs.

Thus, no the programmers do *not* decide what you are able to do
because there are more ways to reconfigure and rearrange
programs than any programmer ever imagines.

Or are you laboring under the misconception that a
nonprogrammer can make a significant modification to the functionality of
an application of the complexity of GIMP?

The GIMP only does what the programmers decided... but instead
of deciding *everything* and putting it *all* into a single
program, The GIMP is typical unix software and allows several
packages to work together. And each program is extensible, and
is designed to make it easy for others to add functionality.

There are dozens of plugins for The GIMP from folks other than
the development team, and even absent the plugins The GIMP does
*not* try to do everything, and emphatically does not lock a
user into doing only what/how they decide. For a great deal of
other functionality each user is free to pick and choose
whichever programs best suit the user's needs.

For example, virtually all the color management functionality is
*not* part of The GIMP. You can choose one package to handle
input file conversions and another for printing. And if next
month someone comes out with a better package for that, it will
be very simple to change. It doesn't require being accepted by
the development team for The GIMP, and you and I are both free
to use a *different* package, and even to use tools that were
never designed for whatever we may decide to use them for!

It also doesn't cost hundreds of dollars to give a new package a
try either.

Photoshop, as one example, is *not* designed with that philosophy.

For some people of course the Photoshop (Windows) philosophy
*is* the best. They *should* use it. For others it isn't. I
don't see a need for people to make so much effort at denouncing
systems that others use just because they don't. In particular
that is disgusting when the reason they don't use it is an
inability to comprehend how it actually does work.

My problem is that people on both sides do the denouncing without first
making at least a half-assed effort to research the product that they are
denouncing.

In your post you go on about GIMP plugins like Photoshop doesn't have this
capability when in fact not only does it have it, but there are so many
plugins available that other vendors of photo editing and artistic software
have been forced by popular demand to support Photoshop plugins. Even GIMP
supports them in Windows. When there are so many useful GIMP plugins that
Corel finds themselves forced to support them then get back to me.

You also talk about spending hundreds of dollars to try a new package--in
fact most vendors of decent Windows software, including Microsoft, have
free trialware available.

If GIMP and Linux work for you then that's the tool to use. If Photoshop
works for you that's the tool to use. If Photopaint works for you that's
the tool to use. If something else works for you that's the tool to use.
If you think someone else is doing wrong by choosing a different tool from
your favorite then you're a loon.

--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)
.

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