mtPaint development

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HairyWill · #1 Post by **HairyWill** » Fri 19 Dec 2008, 14:45

One of the nice features about OSS development is how close you can get to the developers. Dmitry Groshev the mtPaint maintainer is currently looking for areas to focus on in the next development branch.

If you have any suggestions for features or improvements to mtPaint it would be really good to hear them.

I've never quite understood how mtPaint manages to cram so much into such a small package.To find out more about mtPaint, use it and read here.

J-Bob · #2 Post by **J-Bob** » Sun 28 Dec 2008, 02:28

my suggestion would be to be able to copy between different prgrams and mtpaint, and between different mtpaint windows. if he does this, he might have something that could take on the gimp on his hands.

as that's the only reason i use the gimp, is because of that.

#3 Post by **Flash** » Sun 28 Dec 2008, 02:47

It would be great if mtPaint could show the Exif metadata from my digital camera's pictures.

Lobster · #4 Post by **Lobster** » Sun 28 Dec 2008, 04:51

use a generic interface

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 647#147130

Fossil · #5 Post by **Fossil** » Sun 28 Dec 2008, 10:53

Batch resize in standard formats - 640, 800, 1024, etc. Also batch enhance, lighten/darken, contrast/gamma.
For what it's worth, I much prefer manipulating images in mtPaint to Fottox which, by comparison, is so slow on an old machine with 256 megs of ram.

#6 Post by **ttuuxxx** » Sun 28 Dec 2008, 11:30

Something which might look like
http://www.pixlr.com/editor/
or
http://www.splashup.com/
or
plus a stationary colour wheel under the layers,
and use these icons, so people might know what they are
http://tango.freedesktop.org/ArtLibreSet
Plus when you click file/save or file/save as it saves the complete picture including all the layers, It should ask to have the layers flattened.
the layers window should be opened automatically with the colour wheel and be a part of the main application and the working area should be in the middle, Like the picture piclr
Actually he did want some icons before, But I never had time to design them, If anyone has time, maybe post some icons that you built yourself, or that are open sourced and provide the links to the orginal icons, so the author may be contacted if needed.
Also whats up with the 2 window view, that confusing and really you just need 1 window with layers.If you wanted another window just open another mtpaint

and copy and paste between them

ttuuxxx

droope · #7 Post by **droope** » Wed 31 Dec 2008, 00:40

My suggestion is the same as Bob, that I can't for example cut my selection and then paste it into a new window...

That sucks really really badly. All in all, it's a nice program

Aronzak · #8 Post by **Aronzak** » Wed 31 Dec 2008, 01:17

I'd suggest having a simple mode/ advanced mode. That way it would be easier to use for someone that has never used it before, but would still have a lot of features.

wjaguar · #9 Post by **wjaguar** » Wed 31 Dec 2008, 09:33

J-Bob wrote:my suggestion would be to be able to copy between different prgrams and mtpaint, and between different mtpaint windows.

mtPaint 3.29 got released today - you may get it here:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfile ... _id=650430
Among other new features, it has import from / export to system clipboard.

Flash wrote:It would be great if mtPaint could show the Exif metadata from my digital camera's pictures.

Since version 3.20, mtPaint has a preconfigured file action for the purpose; it uses the 'exif' tool made by the author of libexif http://libexif.sourceforge.net/. I don't see the need to copy the tool's code into mtPaint when user can just install that same tool on his system.

Lobster wrote:use a generic interface

ttuuxxx wrote:the layers window should be opened automatically with the colour wheel and be a part of the main application and the working area should be in the middle, Like the picture piclr

This would kill usability on small-screen devices. And I am not (yet) ready to maintain two completely different interfaces around the common processing engine - while this might be the best solution in the long term, for now the program's structure still depends on particulars of the interface a bit too much.

ttuuxxx wrote:Plus when you click file/save or file/save as it saves the complete picture including all the layers, It should ask to have the layers flattened.

And for this, there exists "Layers->Save composite image", since times immemorial (certainly since before my involvement with mtPaint). In version 3.29 (beta for 3.30) I also added "Composite to new layer", so now user can get a flattened image without having to write it to disk and read back.

Fossil wrote:Batch resize in standard formats - 640, 800, 1024, etc. Also batch enhance, lighten/darken, contrast/gamma.

Batch operations don't fit well with the current architecture of mtPaint. But I'll keep the idea in mind, and implement it when it becomes feasible.

Aronzak wrote:I'd suggest having a simple mode/ advanced mode. That way it would be easier to use for someone that has never used it before, but would still have a lot of features.

I'd always thought mtPaint's interface is rather simple already; certainly far easier to find one's way around than GIMP or Photoshop. All advanced stuff either can be left at defaults, or is hidden in configuration dialogs.
So, which parts of the interface you think are too complex for a beginner?

smokey01 · #10 Post by **smokey01** » Wed 31 Dec 2008, 10:23

I would really like to view next and previous image in the current directory.

If it can already do this, please tell me how.

I wouldn't like to see too many changes as I think mtPaint is brilliant. I use it on a daily basis.

muggins · #11 Post by **muggins** » Wed 31 Dec 2008, 12:57

I've uploaded a .pet of mtpaint v3.29 here

Aronzak · #12 Post by **Aronzak** » Thu 01 Jan 2009, 00:28

wjaguar wrote:
Aronzak wrote:I'd suggest having a simple mode/ advanced mode. That way it would be easier to use for someone that has never used it before, but would still have a lot of features.
I'd always thought mtPaint's interface is rather simple already; certainly far easier to find one's way around than GIMP or Photoshop. All advanced stuff either can be left at defaults, or is hidden in configuration dialogs.
So, which parts of the interface you think are too complex for a beginner?

Well, the first impression counts. The second window that pops up and the colour bar on the left are confusing at first. People coming from paint/GIMP expect buttons on the left. I'd say hide the panel on the left and don't open the second window, and add a single button to bring these up.

Also, I think you should add buttons for things like crop, and take away the rotate/flip buttons, as I would think that users would want the simpler commands more often. Of course, once you learn the hotkeys it's easy.

Otherwise, it's quite a good application. Easier to use than the GIMP's default three windows.

#13 Post by **Flash** » Thu 01 Jan 2009, 02:13

wjaguar wrote:...Since version 3.20, mtPaint has a preconfigured file action for the purpose; it uses the 'exif' tool made by the author of libexif http://libexif.sourceforge.net/. I don't see the need to copy the tool's code into mtPaint when user can just install that same tool on his system. ...

Well, thanks! I guess I don't understand what you mean though. I looked through all the drop-down menus I could find in mtPaint and finally found View Exif data in File -> Actions. However all I get when I click on it (with a picture I just took open in mtPaint) is a blank Leafpad window. I assume I need to install libexif but it looks like it needs to be compiled for Puppy. Is that correct?

wjaguar · #14 Post by **wjaguar** » Fri 02 Jan 2009, 08:30

Flash wrote:I assume I need to install libexif but it looks like it needs to be compiled for Puppy. Is that correct?

What you need is the 'exif' program - it is on the same Sourceforge page as libexif, but is a separate package; libexif is its dependency which may happen to be preinstalled (it is on my Slackware 12.1 system; don't know if it is on Puppy), and needs be compiled too if it isn't.
The program itself is tiny (30K), the library is 160K.

muggins · #15 Post by **muggins** » Fri 02 Jan 2009, 09:58

If it's exiv2 that's required, it's available here.

wjaguar · #16 Post by **wjaguar** » Fri 02 Jan 2009, 11:55

muggins wrote:If it's exiv2 that's required, it's available here.

It can serve as substitute; user would have to modify the program name in the "View EXIF data" action for that ("File->Actions->Configure").
The main difference between the two libraries is, libexiv2 is ten times bigger than libexif.

muggins · #17 Post by **muggins** » Fri 02 Jan 2009, 13:16

I forgot that Barry has included libexiv2 in pup4. But it also has libexif.so.12.

#18 Post by **ttuuxxx** » Fri 02 Jan 2009, 14:00

Heres 19 menu 22x22 icons I found at tango they need to be change to xpm and resized to 20x20. If you like. I already renamed them, so its a matter of changing from png to xpm and resizing.
ttuuxxx

wjaguar · #19 Post by **wjaguar** » Fri 02 Jan 2009, 17:34

ttuuxxx wrote:I already renamed them, so its a matter of changing from png to xpm and resizing.

If only it were as easy as that...
There is no such thing as XPM with partial transparency - and these icons do not look nearly as nice if converted to on-off transparency and to sane number of colors.
Fancier RGBA icons such as these cannot in their original form be used with GTK+1, as they need a set of APIs added in GTK+2. And while it is possible to add support for such icons in GTK+2-based builds, it is not a trivial change in any sense - so it is too late for version 3.30. Maybe in 3.35 if I feel like it.

#20 Post by **Flash** » Fri 02 Jan 2009, 19:50

muggins wrote:I forgot that Barry has included libexiv2 in pup4. But it also has libexif.so.12.

If Puppy 4.1.2 already has all that's needed to activate View Exif data, how do I do it?

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