Re: Thoughts on Krita website presentation

On separating Krita from Krita or not, the big pity is that
KOffice has
the "Office" in it. If it were called anything
else, just listing Krita
under the "K[whatever] project" would be just
fine.

But I do think Krita would benefit immensely from being
separated from
anything called "Office," if not in community,
then at least in
appearance. There's nothing wrong with adding "Krita
makes use of the
libraries of KOffice, and works closely with the KOffice
community to
bring you features such as embedded KOffice document layers,
but it can
also be installed as a stand-alone program."

Also, despite the "K" at the beginning, it'd be
nice to not make it sound
so Kde dependent. Hell, I don't even use Kde. This is
shrinking the
userbase (and potential developer-base).

On spinning off Karbon and Krita, my personal long-term
hopes would be for
an entire open source Creative Suite
("OpenCreative"?), that would include
the following:
- The Gimp: high-end photo-manipulation
- Krita: painter program
- Karbon and Inkscape: vector illustrator programs
- Scribus
- and anything else you can think of (there Can be several
programs doing
the same purpose, the user would be free to chose, as long
as he can
easily access the choices from just one webpage).

Community-wise, the developers of the various programs don't
have to work
too closely together. The alliance could be in name-only
(though
eventually aspects such as interoperability would better be
addressed),
but just having a central website saying "OpenCreative:
the Open Source
solution to your graphic needs" would be a huge PR
bonus. The central
webpage would link to the separate programs while explaining
the usage of
each in a uniform manner.

Right now, let's face it... of open source programs, most
people only know
Gimp (which, brilliant as it is, sometimes has UI reputation
problems, and
can't be everything at once). The Gimp mailing list had
discussed several
issues some time ago, and it basically came to the
conclusion that it is
indeed primarily a photo-editing program, not say... a
painter program
(which on the other hand is what Krita is), and so all the
people asking
for painter features are basically barking up the wrong
application.

Having a central page would benefit all the programs, by
allowing the
developers to focus on the features their program Should be
focusing on
(while allowing people to simply find other applications for
their other
needs), instead of trying eventually to make their program
a
"jack-of-all-trades" that tries (in vain) to
satisfy everyone. The central
webpage could lead to stand-alone webpages for all I care,
as long as it's
there to make the end-user's life easier when it comes to
choosing.

Krita, as such, would also end up as "just one of the
programs" listed,
but this is a perfect case of expanding the market,
especially if the
website is done right. Potential contributors would also
have a better
idea of what's available and which program they might want
to contribute
to. The biggest problem would be to get all these projects
to agree on
something like that... So in short, I'm getting ahead of
myself.

In the meantime, at the very least, Krita should Appear to
be a
stand-alone program, and not "part of some office suite
that not everybody uses."


       
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On Tuesday 11 September 2007 03:04:56 pm Valerie VK wrote:
> On separating Krita from Krita or not, the big pity is
that KOffice has
> the "Office" in it. If it were called
anything else, just listing Krita
> under the "K[whatever] project" would be just
fine.
>
> But I do think Krita would benefit immensely from being
separated from
> anything called "Office," if not in
community, then at least in
> appearance. There's nothing wrong with adding
"Krita makes use of the
> libraries of KOffice, and works closely with the
KOffice community to
> bring you features such as embedded KOffice document
layers, but it can
> also be installed as a stand-alone program."
>
> Also, despite the "K" at the beginning, it'd
be nice to not make it sound
> so Kde dependent. Hell, I don't even use Kde. This is
shrinking the
> userbase (and potential developer-base).
>
> On spinning off Karbon and Krita, my personal long-term
hopes would be for
> an entire open source Creative Suite
("OpenCreative"?), that would include
> the following:
> - The Gimp: high-end photo-manipulation
> - Krita: painter program
> - Karbon and Inkscape: vector illustrator programs
> - Scribus


I had hoped that Krita would grow into a replacement for
Gimp.  There is 
already Kolor Paint  as a pure painting program.  If I have
misunderstood the 
rationale of Krita someone please correct my thinking.

I am not a fan of office suites in any case. Too often ease
of use by absolute 
beginners is emphasized over quality of output.  Perhaps
KWord is the bad 
child that gives the whole family a bad name.   In
KDE/Koffice there are 
several overlapping graphic  programs that try to do many of
the same things.  
  
For a long time now users of Gimp have asked for two things:
 native cmyk 
color model and 16 bit color depth. These seem to be
asymptotic goals---we 
never quite get there. But Krita has cmyk out of the box.  

Inkscape also lacks cmyk but I have hopes it will get there
soon. 

I haven't fooled with Karbon yet because I assumed (perhaps
wrongly) that it 
was a low-quality product  along the lines of Kword or else
a toy. It lacks 
even a rudimentary help facility or a manual with the
standard KDE download 
which is not encouraging. And it does not seem to have CMYK
color model 
either.  

So my toolbox includes two different flavors of TeX (pdftex
and Context), 
Gimp, Inkscape, Scribus, Kpdf and Krita.  Since I work in
publishing the  
cmyk color model is essential.  The more Gimp-like
facilities that are added 
to Krita the more useful it becomes. 


-- 
John Culleton
http://wexfordpress.com
http://wexf
ordpress.com/tex/shortlist.pdf
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> I had hoped that Krita would grow into a replacement
for Gimp.  There is
> already Kolor Paint  as a pure painting program.  If I
have misunderstood
> the rationale of Krita someone please correct my
thinking.

KolorPaint isn't a pure painting program. It's a lightweight
painting and 
image editing application. Krita is a high-end painting and
image editing 
application. The main goal is to give the tool to be
creative with your 
image, with a strong emphasie on giving the best tool to
create image from 
scratch. So there is an overlap with the gimp, but both
tools are not 
equivalent.

> I am not a fan of office suites in any case. Too often
ease of use by
> absolute beginners is emphasized over quality of
output.  Perhaps KWord is
> the bad child that gives the whole family a bad name.  
In KDE/Koffice
> there are several overlapping graphic  programs that
try to do many of the
> same things.

Is there ? I guess you mean Karbon and Kivio. Well they
address two differents 
things, one is a general vectorial editor, and the other one
is dedicated to 
flowcharts editing. While you can draw a flowchart with a
vector editor, a UI 
dedicated to flowchart editing is not toy.

> For a long time now users of Gimp have asked for two
things:  native cmyk
> color model and 16 bit color depth. These seem to be
asymptotic goals---we
> never quite get there. But Krita has cmyk out of the
box.
and 16bit  (event
32bit)

-- 
Cyrille Berger
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