About the benefits and problems of open source: Softpanorama

Interesting indeed perspective into the software industry: Softpanorama (Disclaimer: I do not support nor am I actively against any of the opinions stated on the site, but it did stir my thoughts.)

Sun 2008-05-18 15:25 in tech No comments #link

GIMP frustration

Recently I'm disappointed of GIMP: it seems that you cannot defloat a floating selection without completely losing that selection, too.

I might be wrong, though. If you know how to do the following, tell me please. The scenario: we have two photos. You want to copy a selection of photo2 to photo 1.

1. Copy a selection from photo2 (with different levels of opacity and a shape you want to further use in photo1)
2. Paste the selection to photo1. The selection will now be a floating one.
3. Try doing any selection operations to the new selection, such as adding feather or merging the seletion to another one stored on a mask/channel.

I'm using GIMP 2.4.2., apparently. It ships with my Ubuntu <3.

Mon 2008-03-24 10:44 in tech No comments #link

Paint Shop Pro X

I'm pretty excited after having worked on a moodle Quiz UI prototype with Paint Shop Pro X for a week or so now. I have been a user of the PSP for about a decade now. While the essentials really haven't changed that much since version 4 where I started, the program has gained stability, plus two really major features: layers, and vector graphics editing mixed with bitmaps. My prototype has five screens, but they're all included in the same image file and by switching the visibility of different layer groups I can choose which screen to show, while keeping common elements (across the application) always visible.

Everything I want to do with the flexibility of vectors I can, everything I want to do with the simplicity of pixels, I can. In the final result, you don't notice the difference, except when printing: vectors actually go to the printer as vectors, too and look a lot sharper on a good printer than on the screen! :) I only wish something like this was available for Linux, for now I'm restricted to the lab at the university. GIMP doesn't come close in terms of usability and doesn't do vectors. Pure vector-based apps aren't really a choice for this kind of work.

PSP crashed on me only once during these days. Sometimes it seemed to become a bit unstable so I  thought best to restart it. There are some minor bugs, too. The biggest problem is that while trying to select multiple vector objects, it sometimes selects objects from layers which are set invisible, and you can't tell easily if it has done this. This has led to small disasters at times.

I'm sad they market it as a cheap Photoshop, when it can really do more than Photoshop and excels at different kinds of tasks. 

Wed 2007-05-30 15:56 in tech 2 comments #link

Random photo browser

Another app (see the previous one) I'm missing is a very light and snappy "spontaneus"/random order photo collection browser.

Background: I love pointing my xscreensaver to my photos directory and watch it pick random photos from the perhaps twenty-thousand-something photos I have. Anyway, there are problems:

• once in a while a photo appears that hasn't been rotated, and I'd like it to be orientated the right way up.
• Perhaps I'd like to see if other photos in the same set also have the wrong orientation.
• Or perhaps I see a photo I really like, and would like to tag it so I can find it easily later!

I would love a program which would fix all this! Actually, there's no need for it to be a screensaver. I would be more than happy with a desktop application which would, in a window or in fullscreen if I want, show me random photos from a directory and its subdirectories, and then I could:

• pause the show,
• add IPTC tags or comments,
• losslessly rotate,
• or view other photos in the directory.
• If I wanted to, I could also open the photo/directory in some other, more advanced photo editing/browsing app.

That's it. Nothing else (although I admit that probably I wouldn't settle for just this if I actually saw the app made ready ;). I would just love it, and I know some other people who would, too :).

Of course, all this could just be implemented in some already-existing photo manager.

Mon 2006-09-11 22:56 in tech No comments #link

Go useit.com! About column widths

I was glad to see that Jacob Nielsen has changed his Alertbox article CSS so that the column width is defined in em's so that users can enlarge font size and still keep the right number of words per line. The current style of alertbox columns is the style I have quite long recommended for most of the pages on the web.

Admittedly, pilpi.net column width is not in em's but in percentages at the moment. Regardless of that, please just stop defining things in pixels, since though common, that is just too obviously plain stupid, inflexible, and makes browsing sites hard for people who have bad eyesight or who just like to read with a big font, such as me. Modern browsers can do it with CSS, and so can you.

There's a good alistapart.com article about the subject, which will tell you most you need. If you still don't know how, just go ahead and ask me and I'll help you. :).

By the way, the actual article by Jacob Nielsen I linked to is well worth reading, too. :)

Mon 2006-09-11 22:54 in tech No comments #link