Re: Image viewers

faq
flatforty
contribute
subscribe
configure
search
rdf

main
parent
thread

Re: Image viewers - clashes.
by Richard Groult (ShowImg author) on Monday 08/Dec/2003, @06:25

``So, why doesn't the authors of those great image viewers join themselves and try do develop the 'best' image viewer ? Clean design, clean interface, customizable in look, fast and simple.. those are the goals. And then KDE will have it's own complete image viewer, not too many small programs.''

We've already chat about that Aurélien and I but, as he said, the goals are differents.

The other question would be: who will accept to see its prog 'disappeared' into another one? Or maybe we have to make a poll...

Related Links

·   Articles on Applications
·   Also by Richard Groult (ShowImg author)
·   Contact author

The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whomever posted them.
( Reply )

Re: Image viewers - clashes.
by Lubos Lunak on Monday 08/Dec/2003, @07:45

> The other question would be: who will accept to see its prog 'disappeared' into another one?

My guess would be many people, as long as it 'disappears' into something better (or you can call the result GwenImg ;) ). Gwenview and ShowImg are _so_ similar (well, from the user's point of view) that the only difference I can see are differences in missing features that I'd like to use, well, and some bugs. If there was an image viewer that could do what Gwenview+ShowImg can do, that'd be pretty close to my ideal image viewer (both of them alone seem to be the best image viewers for Linux that I've seen though, only surpassed by ACDSee).

But it's your decision of course. Cooperation with others comes at a price, and it's up to you to decide if it is or isn't worth dividing your users base. But note that some of those users could be also potentionally contributors - who should get my bugreports, wishes and possibly patches, if I don't want to bother spending time finding out which of the two so similar solutions is better?

[ Reply To This | View ]

Re: Image viewers - clashes.
by Aurélien Gâteau on Monday 08/Dec/2003, @10:51

Hum... After spending some time to think about it, I think Lubos has a point. It's too bad to divide our user base and, now that Showimg is in KDE Extra Gear, to make the translators do the same work twice. Therefore I think merging is a good idea.

However, I do not want to loose the aim of keeping the image viewer simple: I'm willing to merge, but I think lots of features should be kept as separate programs, integrated through something like the external tools in Gwenview. I'm thinking about things such as batch conversion and renaming (see http://www.krename.net), slideshow, html gallery generation (see http://www.virtualartisans.com/kde/andras/en/kallery.htm), image acquisition...

This does not mean "throw away the code", but rather "turn some parts of the code as separate programs". This way the main program stay small, users can replace some tools with other they prefer or they can use the tools alone.

PS: I post this here because I would like to have Richard as well as user opinion about this idea.

[ Reply To This | View ]

Re: Image viewers - clashes.
by Richard Groult (ShowImg author) on Tuesday 09/Dec/2003, @08:12

``... to make the translators do the same work twice. Therefore I think merging is a good idea. ''
it's more than a translation problem I think :)

`` However, I do not want to loose the aim of keeping the image viewer simple: I'm willing to merge, but I think lots of features should be kept as separate programs, integrated through something like the external tools in Gwenview. ''
Well... you'd like to merge while keeping 2 separate progs ?

`` This does not mean "throw away the code", but rather "turn some parts of the code as separate programs". This way the main program stay small, users can replace some tools with other they prefer or they can use the tools alone. ''
The problem is for users who want to have all the features: they'll have to download a lot of separate progs... it's boring. Look at all these progs which need 10 progs (as DVDRip... :) if you want all the features: you have to found all the corrects versions then compile and install them...

I think it's better to have only one complete prog, and smaller ones with less features.

[ Reply To This | View ]

Re: Image viewers - clashes.
by Aurélien Gâteau on Tuesday 09/Dec/2003, @08:40

"""it's more than a translation problem I think :)"""
Agreed :-)

"""Well... you'd like to merge while keeping 2 separate progs ?"""
No, I'd like to merge the core functionality: browsing the file system for images. The extra features can be separate programs. This does not mean these programs *must be* downloaded separately. Some of them could be included in the source archive, but compiling the source would create multiple binaries: one for the image viewer and several others for the various tasks, with some default configuration to make it easy to run the external tools from the viewer.
This way users get a viewer that is quite complete, but the binaries stay small and they can easily replace some of our included external tools with other ones, if they wish to.

[ Reply To This | View ]

The Fine Print: The previous comments are owned by whomever posted them.
( Reply )


		"I'm holding out for a computer interface that plugs directly into my cerebral cortex." -- Sirtaj Singh Kang
KDE®, "K Desktop Environment", "KDE Dot News", "got the dot?" and the KDE Logo® are trademarks or registered trademarks of KDE e.V. in the European Union, the United States and other countries. All other trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the poster. The rest: Copyright © 2000-2008 KDE e.V. for The KDE Project. For further information or comments on this site, please contact the Webmaster.