[TriLUG] Re: Linux for the desktop

[al johnson]

Well, I don't know how my name got mixed up in a discussion of what graphics 
software is needed for Linux.  However, since I am mixed up in this 
discussion and I'm pretty good at using Photoshop on my Mac, I would suggest 
that real graphic professionals will tell you that if you could have just one 
graphics program that program should be Photoshop.  I've asked several of 
them about Gimp and they say that although the power is there,  the practical 
feel of Photoshop isn't.  When you use Photoshop you almost instinctively 
know where things are located, because the operations which are used most are 
not hidden away as an option underneath something else. Let me give just one 
example of what I'm talking about. 
The best example I can think of is my search for Gimp's cropping tool. It 
took me days until I was able to even find the cropping tool, several times I 
actually thought that Gimp didn't have a cropping tool. This was because 
unlike every other graphics program I've ever used which always has the 
cropping tool close at hand (incidentally this even includes KDE Image Viewer 
!!) and even then it is still takes too much time to use it in Gimp unless 
you use Shift+C.  But doing this necessitates you taking your hand off the 
mouse press two keys and then put your hand back on the mouse, etc.  As you 
realize, this is very inefficient. But if you approach it using just the 
mouse you first have to find it (it's located under "Tools" in a drop-down 
menu-- two levels deep!!).  But even that isn't the end of it. You then have 
to switch the cropping tool on before you can use it with only the mouse, 
which brings us to the problem which everyone I've talked to about Gimp 
says--- The program isn't intuitive and natural, because it doesn't consider 
the most efficient ways to use the operations on graphic images, not to 
mention making very common operations easy to locate. Good tools whether they 
are software or hardware are intuitively easy to use, which Gimp is not. The 
software is otherwise solid, but the GUI is just not well-done because it 
doesn't take into consideration what happens when you use the tool. In other 
words Gimp's GUI  isn't efficient. This makes me crop just about all my 
images using KDE's Image Viewer, except for those images which are too large 
to be cropped with that program because someone didn't consider that someone 
might want to crop images which are larger than the screen they're using (on 
this score Gimp is the superior Cropper, IF YOU CAN FIND THE COMMAND!! :-)). 
Both pieces of software are basically solid, but they just need some 
fine-tuning of these human interface problems. At least because they're both 
open source, problems like these will soon be fixed, unless another Linux 
graphics program beats both of them to the punch.  There's even a chance that 
the Photoshop folks might port their software to Linux in the future, if the 
dream of Linus Torvalds for a better Linux desktop is finally realized.--- Al 
Johnson


On Saturday 08 November 2003 03:17 am, you wrote:
> On Fri, 2003-11-07 at 16:30, al johnson wrote:
> > On Friday 07 November 2003 01:09 pm, you wrote:
> > > Janyne Kizer wrote:
> > > > The missing pieces for us are -- desktop publishing (Microsoft
> > > > Publisher-like application), easy to use graphics program (they have
> > > > GIMP but find it to be overkill and I agree).
> > >
> > > For "easy to use graphics program" are you looking for something
> > > like Paint Shop Pro?  I know CorelPaint was available for linux
> > > for a while on a free (as in beer) basis.  Have you looked into
> > > that? (Actually, I don't know if it is still available or not, sorry.)
> >
> > ===================================
> > Tanner, you've just brought up something that I think Tri-lug might be
> > able to do to improve the desktop, when you mentioned "CorelPaint was
> > available" ..."for a while.... "
> >
> >    Wouldn't it be smart if Tri-lug could create a software library of 
> > Linux software which might be useful to members in the future.
>
> When moving clients over to a Linux Desktop, I always point them to this
> link:
> http://linuxshop.ru/linuxbegin/win-lin-soft-en/table.shtml
>
> It's a database (or library) of equivalent software for Windows/Linux -
> with links to the products.
>
> For an easy to use graphics program they point to:
>   1) Kpaint.
>   2) Tuxpaint.
>   3) Xpaint.
>   4) Gpaint.
>   5) Killustrator.
>   6) Graphtool.
>
> I think you should look at TuxPaint. It can do some simple graphics very
> easily (meaning that it has an interface that a kid - I mean a microsoft
> user can easily access).
> ===
>
> For Project management look at
> http://outreach.sourceforge.net/
>
> This is a web-based Project manager with some very nice features. I
> haven't played with it yet, but it looks good.
>
> HtH - Jon Carnes