Initially the re-lab project was going to work on reverse-engineering of Microsoft Publisher file format for the Scribus team. The thing is that the files generator/inspector (that is, me) is on Linux and doesn’t feel justified to install Windows and use it. And MSP knowingly doesn’t run under WINE reliably (I haven’t managed to run InDesign either). While we are looking for a workaround, there could be some other similar projects to do.
Continue reading ‘Scratching your itches’
Archive for the 'Graphics' Category
Back in June I expressed some doubts regarding viability of Luminance HDR (neé Qtpfsgui) in the review of v2.0.0. Unfortunately it looks like the doubts turn out to be true. A couple of weeks ago all project’s admins (for some reason I’m still among them) were contacted by SourceForge regarding breach of contract (selling software from SF pages is prohibited). The last official project’s maintainer never replied, the problem was resolved by previous maintainer.
Do we have to care, if Luminance HDR compiles and runs? Yes and no. Here is why.
Continue reading ‘In need of viable free HDR solution’
Oh well, the thread in OpenICC mailing list about Elektra is growing into articulating all sorts of amusing misconceptions about public, private and dead projects.
You know, I’ve been spending an awful lot of time exploring various projects in the past years and I’ve got something to say about common mistakes developers do. So here comes the first post on the topic. The whole series is going to be harsh; at some point you might find yourself swearing in presence of kids. Be careful about that — they might point out grammar and spelling mistakes 
The way to start this posting would be definition of terminology. Unfortunately this is possible only for “private project”, because definition of a dead project is oh so much controversial. So let’s go with “private” first.
Some likely definitions for a private project would be:
- a project whose developers do not intend to gain public interest
- a project that exists to satisfy one’s urge to experiment or to solve a private task
- an in-house project
With these definitions in mind, you can visit a website of a private project only by coincidence. Even so, you are not supposed to discover any bold statements, right? Whereas with Elektra you see an attempt at unification of UNIX configuration systems. That’s rather bold for a private project, no? And what you see next is total absence of visible activity.
There is one very popular mistake a lot of free software developers do. They release source code and think it’s enough to get the ball rolling. Well, it’s not and I’m not sorry to tell you that. When your goal is to create a successful project, you have to think of many more things:
- documentation for both developers and users
- regularly posting updates on the state of things
- building a strong community
That’s at the very least. And guess what — very few developers want to do that and/or are good at that. What developers really want to do is to actually work on their project, because this is what they are good at.
In my opinion everyone should be spending time mostly on things that are fun to do. So it’s pointless to criticize a software developer for not being strong community leader or a top class journalist, but it is right to criticize him/her for not attempting to build a team that covers all angles.
You’d be amazed how many important free software projects have websites that barely get updated and what kind of rumors are given life because of lack of information on the subject.
How much of that relates to small projects? A lot.
Tell me, what is the point of a private open source project, be it small or large? You apply GPL or a GPL-like license, because you want modifications go back to you to improve your mainstream code. Free open source software is really rather pragmatical. So if you are not even making an effort of telling people, if the project is alive, you might as well change license to proprietary or put a big lock on the website and tell everyone to stay out.
In the next postings I’m going to further treacherously bully smalls projects cover things like writing news and working with communities. Watch out
Scribus project is known for being slow or, rather, cautious regarding releases of unstable versions. The version 1.5.0 is still in works, and there’s a bunch of new things since January:
- further work on new Preferences and Document Settings dialogs;
- work on better color spaces support;
- gradient meshes (yes, you got it right) thanks to Adrian Johnson’s gradient-mesh Cairo branch;
- Illustrator-like symbols;
- preview for all supported vector file formats in the open/import dialogs;
- improved CGM importer;
- new Micrografx DRW importer;
- support for pattern fills in XAR and PICT importers;
- support for Diamond gradient fills in the XAR importer;
- support for gradient meshes, symbols and brush patterns in the AI importer;
- improved SVG exporter;
- support for vector files in the Scrapbook;
- over 100 of bugfixes.
Unfortunately there’s still a bunch of loose ends all around, including things that should have been fixed for years. The team is currently very limited in both amount of active contributors and their spare time to undertake major projects. They also weren’t accepted as a GSoC mentoring organization this year. The only way to speed up things seems to be getting involved into programming.
Unfortunately the very same thing applies to GIMP and GEGL. The current team is 3,5 persons large. The existing ETA for 2.8 is end of November 2010 (last measured in early March), and the current estimation for 2.10 is 42 weeks while not mentioning GEGL at all.
Both projects have grown very complex over the years, and thus getting involved has become difficult. The best way to start contributing is probably studying plug-ins, since both applications have 3rd party plug-in architecture (not quite advertised in Scribus for some reason which I personally find unreasonable). Developers of both projects (less so for GIMP) are going to attend Libre Graphics Meeting 2010 next week in Brussels, so if you are close to the venue and willing to help, meeting them face2face is an opportunity not to be sneezed at
Okay, so we know which projects are picked for Google Summer of Code 2010 now. As you know, one of the points of GSoC is getting new people to free open source projects. Does it actually work?
Here are some interesting facts over the years about organizations that I track to some extent (or even participate at).
Continue reading ‘GSoC, interesting facts’
Looks like developers are out in the wild and having fun. In just one day:
- SANE 1.0.21, first release in a year, 224 more scanners supported, better HAL/udev support
- PoDoFo 0.8.0, first release in almost 1,5 years, major improvements (yes, I nitpick)
- Mandelbulber 0.43, 3D fractals builder
- LibRaw 0.9.0, relicensed, Foveon ditched, calculates and adjusts max saturation per-channel way better
In the mean time the audio world is busy writing code to support simple yet working built-in session management in JACK.
Libre Graphics Meeting 2010 is getting really close. This year we are doing a Pledgie campaign as well to get support from our community, so that all individual developers willing to participate and make the free graphics software better again could attend.
To give you a better idea why LGM matters I finally finished the article I promised long time ago. Read it here.
If you are willing to support LGM, no matter how little money you can give, please use the Pledgie:
If you are a potential corporate sponsor, it’s best to contact GNOME Foundation, who help us with processing of incoming payments, by writing to lgm(at)gnome.org. Thank you!
If you’ve been reading Graphics Planet for a while, you probably already heard a thing or two from Lukas Tvrdy about this project, but now it’s sort of official. The little unambitious project called re-lab is here to help graphic apps developers with specs on file formats that are for some reasons not publicly available. The background is here. Enjoy.
The following “graphics” organizations are participating at Google Summer of Code this year:
- Blender Foundation
- CGAL
- GIMP
- GNOME (read: F-Spot)
- Hugin/Panotools
- Inkscape
- KDE (read: Krita, Karbon, digiKam)
- OpenCV
- OpenICC
- X.org
- YafaRay
Please visit the list of accepted organizations to find out more.
I think this talented Inkscape artist nicknamed Omnitarian definitely deserves more credit than he gets
