to be removed from the ISO krita & kexi

[Little Girl]

Hey there,

> >> Phil Wyett wrote:
> >>> If you cannot have a good image app then have none. kolourpaint
> >>> is not up to being a well used default app, it just does not
> >>> have the features.

In my opinion, that's exactly why it's a great default application.
I believe that default applications should be easy for just about
anybody to use and should "just work", whereas complex applications
should be for those who require more functionality and purposely go
looking for it.

> > Ovidiu-Florin Bogdan wrote:
> >> I dissagree. People need to have at least the basic image editing
> >> functionality. Similarly to how Windows comes with MS Paint. I
> >> believe that Kcolourpaint would fit this role.

I agree, and it's one of the first applications I install in any fresh
release of Kubuntu. (:

> Harald Sitter wrote:
> > What for though? I absolutely fail to come up with an actual use
> > case where you would want an application as "simple" as
> > kolourpaint at all.

- For drawing something from scratch if you're not a trained artist.
- For selecting a section of an image to copy and paste elsewhere.
- For doing a basic edit of an image (changing the background color
  or adding some text or an arrow, for example).
- For resizing an image.
- For adding or removing transparency to or from an image.

I could go on. (:

> > On Windows it has sort of a use case for screenshots, since you
> > need to paste them somewhere, so that usually ends up being Paint
> > or Word. On Kubuntu that use case does not present because we
> > have a nifty tool to manage screenshooting.

+1 for Linux. (:

> > For photo management/resizing/cropping you'll want to use
> > Gwenview or Digikam.

I just took a quick look at Gwenview to see if I could easily figure
out how to resize an image. It wasn't immediately obvious, but on a
second look I happened to look at the bottom of the screen and found
the Operations tab, which does, indeed, contain Crop and Resize
entries, so I guess it would work for those. (:

I didn't have Digikam, so I installed it just now. It has a detailed
setup process before you can use it, and the little question mark
icon doesn't do anything. I chose the defaults and then poked around.
You can find resize and crop in the menus, but the editor and the
resizing and cropping tools aren't my idea of easy or intuitive.

> > And as was mentioned, for actual drawing or pixel edition (a la
> > photoshop) kolourpaint is not smart enough (i.e. lacks features
> > and all that).

KolourPaint offers pixel editing with or without a grid, and gives
you a little zoomed out image you can put anywhere on-screen to get an
idea of what your micro-edits are doing to the whole thing. While
these features may not be as powerful as those offered by Photoshop,
they are handy and should be relatively easy for just about anybody
to figure out how to use.

> > Only thing that is left is  "not actual" drawing (e.g. a child
> > drawing random stuff to pass time, and no paper and pen were
> > available...), hardly a use case TBH.

That child might disagree. (:

> > So, again the question: what for does a Kubuntu user need a very
> > dumb pixmap drawing application?

For minor editing purposes without requiring detailed training or
education.

Harald Sitter wrote:
> Oh, FWIW, we do have libreoffice-draw (which is an equally "simple"
> drawing application) on the ISO (due to deps from Impress), so
> kolourpaint technically would duplicate that.

We tried it for a few minutes this morning and didn't figure out how
to get a pencil or brush to draw or write with.

In another message in this thread, Krita was mentioned as an
alternative. I installed that as well just now. I'm not sure how many
people are going to know whether they want a CMK, Comic Template,
Grayscale, or RGB template. I rolled the dice and went with CMYK, but
the moment it made me ponder what to do was the moment I thought this
should not be a default application. Despite that, I would like to
add that I liked that it has you in drawing mode by default and that
it sure seems to have a *lot* of power. (:

I'll bet it would be fun to take a laptop with digiKam, Gwenview,
KolourPaint, and Krita on it to a mall or other public place and ask
a number of random strangers to take a few moments to try each
application. They should try to crop and resize an existing image,
and either create a new image or edit an existing image to draw a
smiley face or write a word on it freehand. It could be interesting.
(:

-- 
Little Girl

There is no spoon.