Gimp 2.8 Finally Released 737
Cryophallion writes "After many years of development, GIMP 2.8 is finally released. Among its features: the oft-desired single-window mode, layer groups, and many other massive improvements, including some of the GIMP UI team's work. This might be the release that helps make The GIMP a much more user friendly experience for newcomers, and has features that are rivaling those of certain exceptionally expensive commercial programs. While the porting of GEGL is still ongoing (and recently reported to have made massive advances made), this is a major step forward for one of the premier open source projects." Here are the official release notes.
Looks like Windows installer isn't quite ready yet (Score:5, Informative)
Looks like Windows installer isn't quite ready yet
(Still on version 2.6.12, as per: http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html [sourceforge.net])
Re:The Name (Score:5, Informative)
Warning: non native English speaker here.
I didn't know gimp was an offensive word. Do children recognize it as offensive? Is it because it sounds like "chimp"? Are monkeys offensive?
Re:The Name (Score:5, Informative)
'Gimp' is a perjorative for disabled people.
Re:The Name (Score:5, Informative)
It's an offensive slang term for handicapped people. And it speaks volumes about the marketing ability of geeks.
Re:2.6 for Windows (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Maaaaaan... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The Name (Score:4, Informative)
You stand corrected sir: http://pinta-project.com/
Re:The Name (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The Name (Score:4, Informative)
I'm a native English speaker, living in England. I've never heard 'gimp' used to mean anything other than the software.
Must be an American thing.
Re:have they speeded it up any?? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:2.6 for Windows (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The Name (Score:4, Informative)
Cripple isn't nice because of what it describes. Every single word we ever use to describe the condition will, over time, become a pejorative [wikipedia.org].
The concept of calling it "developmentally disabled" or whatever seems like a good idea though. It's such a stupid term that it has a high probability of replaced by something else before it gets the chance to be offensive. Although ... it's already starting to be used sarcastically. Give it a decade or so, it'll have a shortened version that's exclusively offensive, and once that becomes well-known it's only a matter of time before the long version becomes offensive too due to its connotation with the shortened form. The best part is, the euphemism treadmill has been going on for the entirety of recorded history, so there's basically no chance it's not just human nature, so we'll never get to stop! Yay!
Re:The Name (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The Name (Score:5, Informative)
It used to have that connotation. Then the movie Pulp Fiction came out. Now Gimp is associated with leather bound masochistic homosexuals...
Re:The Name (Score:5, Informative)
boss to actually consider it as an alternative to MSPaint
Of course after using GIMP for a minute, the (almost guaranteed) reaction is going to be "fuck this, MSPaint will do..."
I've started recommending Paint.NET for people who need a minimal image editor.
Re:The Name (Score:4, Informative)
Several years ago, a husband once brought his handicapped wife to a Linux users group meeting. Another women in the group briefly said something about the GIMP. The handicapped older woman than angrily demanded that her husband take her home at once. She incorrectly thought the other younger woman had disparagingly referred to her as being a gimp.
When I was in high school, back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a couple of guys I knew used the word gimp as slang for a handicapped person. I have not heard the word used since then.
For those who have not heard the word gimp before, here is a link to a short article that uses the word several times:
http://www.scottsandsalive.com/gimp-fraud/ [scottsandsalive.com]
Re:The Name (Score:3, Informative)
Count me as one of those who feels a "deep seated need to be offended". I have an autistic nephew who has been called a gimp by various ignorant fools in the past, and hell yes, I'm offended. You have offended me, by being a total jerk. You should be ashamed of yourself, but on slashdot, vile and abusive speech evidently gets you modded plus five.
Silly me, I thought abusing people who cannot help their disability was the sign of a person with a crushing inferiority complex, desperately trying to elevate themselves by attacking those they percieve as even weaker, and doomed to eventually fail. But Slashdot calls that insightful.
You have a problem, a personality problem as large as alchoholism or heroin abuse, and the four people who gave you mod points are enabling that problem, encouraging you to go farther down a road that leads eventually to your own distruction. You can realize that it is the very worst aspect of your own nature that attempts to justify abusing some of the most helpless of our society, or not, but you probably consider those who modded you up as friends so you will have less incentive to grow up and learn to give a damn about other people. That's a pity.
Re:Looks like Windows installer isn't quite ready (Score:5, Informative)
The GIMP developers' response was this:
Not a release until we say so.
Truly yours, GIMP developers
P.S. And please don't make us think of evil things like banning your IP for FTP access. Spreading the news is great. Doing it before an official announcement is evil. It's our right to reserve a certain level of surprise. Have some respect.
Re:The Name (Score:5, Informative)
Your comment does not make sense.
Sure it does. On quality operating systems with well designed windowing systems, there is a program called a "window manager" whose job it is to decorate and arrange application windows as the user sees fit.
Well behaved applications would bring up lots of independent windows since they understood that the user knows best and has chosen a windows manager to suit.
Then came a raft of awful window managers designed to emulate popular but less well designed operating systems. Along with that came lots of whining about the GIMP since it wasn't so easy to use if the user chose a window manager whic was incapable of managing windows in a sane way.
To stem the flow of bitter griping, the GIMP developers ended up having to combine all the windows together into one big window, and then provide user interface elements to allow users to manipulate these subwindows. This stops the poor quality window managers from making a hash of things.
In other words, the GIMP has now taken over the role of the window manager.