Are they going to upgrade the name as well?

Yeah I think they're going for something more straightforward that describes exactly what it's about

Brushes, Design, Shapes & Multimedia

This would really mess up search results

Or else it will be a sub-module.

GYMP? 💪✨🤭

That would produce so many priceless weirded out faces when you tell someone you love GIMP and use that acronym and they don't know what you are referring to.

Very interesting, thanks for the update.

edit: I also love how the article credits every individual contributor for the new features they made, a very nice way to celebrate the group effort

To avoid confusion: BDSM, the FOSS formerly known as GIMP

Or: Graphics, Images, Media & Print

nice one

Why? It describes succinctly what the app does.

For the file format, would have been JSON instead XML not the better format? Its lighter and easier to parse and write, meaning more performant than XML.

I would not feel comfortable looking this up on a work computer.

Yeah, now I'm just gonna get screenshots of this app.

IMHO: XML is superior as a document storage format. JSON is superior as a data transfer format.

XML is not really superior to JSON as an image editing file format. EDIT: XML is better, if you want to keep a readable source format with markup. But that is not what a format for an image editing tool like GIMP should be needed for in my opinion.

No, they are both not really suitable for that. But I don't see where the link in the OP implies they plan to store binary image data in XML, they're probably going to store that in a binary format and use XML to describe relationships and other metadata.

I’m gunna disagree with you XML comes with validators and versioning as part of the XML spec. You can validate XML files against XSD descriptors that can be published and even referenced by the XML file.

The only downside of XML over json is that XML is verbose AF.

Strict validators, versioning, checking, and definitions is EXACTLY what you want in a storage format.

ODF is also XML. It makes sense here.

More information for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML_Schema_(W3C)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument

Performance doesn't matter unless you are dealing with gigabytes of xml. And ease of parsing/writing is irrelevant when it's done under the hood by the program.

JSON comes with builtin data formats that XML lacks, that's why you have such overhead with additional validation. Everything in XML is treated as strings, and there are lot of stuff like entities that is totally unneeded for a file format like in GIMP. XML Schema is needed because the format is extremely complicated unlike JSON, if you have no other validation. GIMP itself has validation builtin already.

Performance matters a lot, because program can autosave in quick sessions after simple steps. Even more important if multiple images are edited or loaded. While this is not the biggest improvement, it is still something to keep in mind. Performance should always be a priority. Programs will keep expanding and add bloat over time, so its good to have a format like that in mind.

That's a US defaultism issue

Related to that, Jacob Boerema has implemented PSD Descriptor import support. Most of our current PSD support has been based on the the public Adobe specification. This document was last updated in 2019 however, and modern PSDs use a relatively undocumented text format called Descriptors to store many features.

The battle tested strategy of only providing old standards to others, like MS does.

Why should they change the name just for the vanity of Americans who have a dual meaning for the word, and make it difficult for the whole rest of the world to find tutorials and documentation going back decades?

Is anyone interested in having GIMP with another name doing the work to make that happen?

GIMP is shaping up to be (and actually already is IMO) the best editor out there for nondestructive work.

JSON items don’t have attributes, which sometimes makes queries outside of a specific path or across domains difficult or impossible.

“But if you take the time to design your objects correctly…”

Or they could just choose the format that already does what is needed instead of worrying about building and maintaining serialization layers to shoehorn in a functionality that they could get for free by picking the correct format in the first place.

Also why are we having this argument? XML isn’t going away, REST already beat SOAP, and JSON is harder to read. Compressed XML is only about 10% larger than compressed JSON, and we’re talking about the metadata of a layered image file so that’s like 16kb vs 15kb.

gimp /gĭmp/
noun
A narrow flat braid or rounded cord of fabric used for trimming.
A limp or a limping gait.
A person who limps.

I suppose the association with limping is a bit unfortunate. Although GIMP is an acronym.

The fact that a particular sub-culture has its own slang meaning for the word is irrelevant.

You have it mostly backwards. XML has like 40+ types that are all standardized. JSON only has the basic JS types. XML is a superset of JSON when it comes to types.

How would you represent a double float, or binary data, or a datatime in JSON. You would have to use strings in JSON. In XML you would use the xsd:double, xsd:binary, and xsd:dateTime.

JSON only works if you think in JavaScript. For languages with more complete / complex data systems it does not do unless you resort to the string thing.

For your information:

Easier to read:
https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/jfsm/1.1.2.1?topic=queries-xsd-data-types

The official spec:
https://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-2/

As for validation I think “right tool for the right job” is the best approach here. How do you know your validator is validating correctly? That’s the beauty of XML. Validation is part of the spec. XML is more complicated, but only because it’s more capable than json. Just like protobuf is more complicated than JSON. It’s also more complicated and not centered on JSON types.

As explained, its not about the compressed size only. I am talking about uncompressed data that is live patched.

This comes up every time GIMP is mentioned. To be honest, outside US and UK (and few others) for the rest of the world the word GIMP has no negative meaning (no meaning at all). So, yeah, maybe who cares about the name? Well, change it if it's really a problem. But, is it really a problem?

Fair point is GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) doesn't sound as a reasonable acronym. I would maybe find a better acronym, but changing the name itself feels like changing the name of the town of Bra in Italy or the town of Fuck in Austria, or why not, even the town of Love in Sweden... Good luck if we need to only find and use names that do not offend anybody in any language of the world.

Krita, the main FOSS competitor to GIMP, feels a much worse sounding name to me. By the way, i read GIMP with a soft G (like a j) not even as English speakers do pronounce it.

I've recently tried using GIMP again and, as a past detractor, I've gotta say it's improved significantly.

Does the UX still suck though?

Nope. You just made the mistake of learning something else first and expecting other tools to match it

You should always measure first before blindly following dogmas. I doubt that the choice of serialization format is what dominates processor time in this case.

You should always measure first before blindly following dogmas.

Then you follow it by doubting it without measuring:

I doubt that the choice of serialization format is what dominates processor time in this case.

Also note I was not just speaking of today, but with future additions and changes. You can't measure the future, but you can plan ahead and build upon a good foundation, that the small format can be used for extending it in future. That's the idea. Also to test what you suggest they have to build the entire system years and waste lot of time and effort.

This is me with all CAD software 😭

I remember a guy telling me back in 2015 or so that Gimp was designed for having 2 monitors. At first I tought it made no sense but some yers after I got the chance to try and it way more comfortable to put all toollboxes in a separate monitor.

Honestly so much better when they moved away from the "everything is a floating window" interface. I can find stuff now.

This is true of pretty much all software. So many people expect to be able to pick up LibreOffice office and use it like they use MS office and then get immediately irritated the button doesn’t look exactly the same and give up.

I got irritated by the differences, but I was more irritated by Microslop, so it was the lesser of two irritants. I mostly figured it out eventually. Finding H2 is always at the bottom of the entire style list though for some fucking reason like there's no excuse for that kind of mild irritation

You could always move it and submit a pull request. That is one of the beauties of open source!

I mean, sort of? I picked up Affinity Photo from Photoshop pretty quick because the UX isn't crap.

Yeah butlike, I am using Calc, and I use the arrows, and it just, moves the view instead of which cell is selected, which feels really backwards.

I found a Stack Overflow thread where people discuss this and actually test it. Further down the page is a 2026 test. The results are it's basically the same, very little practical difference in normal usage. If you're auto saving a file every 30 seconds you will not notice any difference between XML and JSON.

Personally, I like XML more for data files like this. I would not reach for JSON as my first thought for deserealizing a complex object hierarchy. Stuff like, a polygon can have a drawing of type vector which can have n paths which each have exactly 2 points… easy to store and validate in XML. Quite messy and complicated in JSON.

<Drawing type="polygon">
  <Line color="#fed1aa">
    <Point x="6" y="7" />
    <Point x="69" y="420" />
  </Line>
</Drawing>

First thing I always do is set icon scheme to have colors. I don't know who thought monochrome for the tools was a good idea, but it takes me twice as long to find anything.

The page 404s

What is the upgrade?

Did you feel comfortable searching to learn how to use GIMP?

which part do you dislike? maybe because it fits my mental model very well, but i find the ui to be very intuitive overall. keyboard shortcuts are also pretty simple..

and there's some user made config that makes its ui and keybinds work like adobe photoshop if thats what youre used to