That's the problem, you have a bias because you've already learned the tribal knowledge. Having to learn it from scratch, GIMP's UI is sorely lacking. While it does have the tools, the organization of them is all over the place.

There are many many more but start with the app having the overbearing assumption that it thinks you want save to its file format rather than make an ad hoc edit.

The big remaining thing I can think of is the "layer boundary" thing, which (it seems to me) is very confusing for new users and inconvenient for all users.

I also have a vibes-based feeling that when I used to use Photoshop twenty-five years ago I was a lot more productive than I'm able to be in GIMP, but I can't be sure if that's just because I used to do more graphic stuff back then and I've never picked it up to the same degree. I find myself having to hunt for things in menus a lot, but that might be a me problem. Photoshop also took a while to get used to.

Edit: I basically agree with the people complaining about Save and Export being unexpectedly separate, although I also think it's not that hard to press Ctrl+E instead of Ctrl+S.

Then one day, they did it. They put the tools on the same window as the image, as Deluxe Paint did in 1985. FINALLY.

... but at the same time, they introduced the absolute bollocks that is "if you hit save we're going to spam you indefinitely into using our format".

In any other tool, if you _open_ a file (e.g. a PNG, JPEG, or in say LibreOffice's case, a CSV or XLSX), and then hit "save", it can nag you once that you're not using the tool's preferred file format, and _may_ be missing some important feature that only its preferred format supports... but you should just be able to click "fuck that, save it as the format I loaded it as" and not hear that again.

Not GIMP. It fucking well refuses to let you save as the format you opened. You have to cancel your "save" of the file you opened, and instead "export" to the file you opened... at which point it warns you you'll overwrite THE FILE YOU WANT TO SAVE. And after you've done that, and try to close the image, it'll warn you you haven't saved THE FUCKING FILE IT JUST FORCED YOU TO USE "EXPORT" TO SAVE because you didn't save it in its preferred format ABSOLUTELY GO FUCK YOURSELF, GIMP, I AM NOT GOING TO SAVE AS XCF A JPEG I AM CROPPING AND WILL NEVER EVER EDIT AGAIN

This is why I completely gave up on GIMP and will never open it again. I would like to line up all the GIMP authors in a row, and run down the line slapping them all in the face with a wet trout.

If anyone from GIMP is listening:

    * User opens a non-native format, e.g. JPEG
    * User hits "Save"
    * Present user with a dialog like so:
        This image may contain content that cannot be saved in the currently selected file format "JPEG"
        Use the default XCF file format to be sure the image is saved correctly
        [x] Ask when not saving in XCF or default format
        [Use JPEG format] [Use XCF format]
    * User can turn off this nag globally by deselecting "Ask when not saving in XCF or default format"
    * If user selects "Use JPEG format", future saves of this file will not nag again

But yeah, in my mind, it's always been "ex see eff", so an XCF.

With “a” vs “an”, the pronunciation is more important than the spelling.

Seems to have been working great for MS Office.

I only need to do somewhat basic stuff these days, so photopea.com is more than enough for me. However, now that I look it has tons of new features. Nothing to install, is ad-sponsored by default.

IIRC, this is a lone developer, who has previously refused what seemed like lucrative catch & kill acquisition offers.

Here is a post with lots of info:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33334521

I think it's a lesson in how not to run an open-source project. I put it in the same category as Darktable, which gives off that exact same bad first impression.

    // At this point, I'd like to take a moment to speak to you about the Adobe PSD format.
    // PSD is not a good format. PSD is not even a bad format. Calling it such would be an
    // insult to other bad formats, such as PCX or JPEG. No, PSD is an abysmal format. Having
    // worked on this code for several weeks now, my hate for PSD has grown to a raging fire
    // that burns with the fierce passion of a million suns.
    // If there are two different ways of doing something, PSD will do both, in different
    // places. It will then make up three more ways no sane human would think of, and do those
    // too. PSD makes inconsistency an art form. Why, for instance, did it suddenly decide
    // that *these* particular chunks should be aligned to four bytes, and that this alignement
    // should *not* be included in the size? Other chunks in other places are either unaligned,
    // or aligned with the alignment included in the size. Here, though, it is not included.
    // Either one of these three behaviours would be fine. A sane format would pick one. PSD,
    // of course, uses all three, and more.
    // Trying to get data out of a PSD file is like trying to find something in the attic of
    // your eccentric old uncle who died in a freak freshwater shark attack on his 58th
    // birthday. That last detail may not be important for the purposes of the simile, but
    // at this point I am spending a lot of time imagining amusing fates for the people
    // responsible for this Rube Goldberg of a file format.
    // Earlier, I tried to get a hold of the latest specs for the PSD file format. To do this,
    // I had to apply to them for permission to apply to them to have them consider sending
    // me this sacred tome. This would have involved faxing them a copy of some document or
    // other, probably signed in blood. I can only imagine that they make this process so
    // difficult because they are intensely ashamed of having created this abomination. I
    // was naturally not gullible enough to go through with this procedure, but if I had done
    // so, I would have printed out every single page of the spec, and set them all on fire.
    // Were it within my power, I would gather every single copy of those specs, and launch
    // them on a spaceship directly into the sun.
    //
    // PSD is not my favourite file format.

Gimp was never in such a situation.

Culture is important.

It will lead to someone with the insight on how to make actual material improvements frustrated and angry that they don't have the technical skill (or time) to grapple with a complex codebase, and the people with the technical skill working on the codebase dismiss people with actual knowledge in different domains.

"Patches welcome" is not any kind of welcome. It's basically a euphemism for "fuck off, I don't want to have a conversation to make something better, I just want to hack on Feature X".

1999 is exactly right for the start of the XML hype, everything had to be XML, it would single handedly solve the software crisis (after OOP failed to do that) because everything would be able to talk to everything!

[1] https://sqlite.org/sqlar/doc/trunk/README.md

[2] https://www.sqlite.org/affcase1.html

The problem was that people hyped it up as the solution for every problem and all the world's ills, so it wound up being used where it had no business being used (and therefore badly).

XML was a hammer used to bang in a lot of things that weren't remotely nail-shaped, and accordingly, a certain percentage of traumatised people despise it and react to any mention of it with fear and loathing.

It's kind of neat when you have an application for it that really leans into its strengths.

I don't know what "mature tooling" you're talking about for zipped XML, but I guarantee you it's not going to be better (or more mature) than SQLite and its ecosystem.

I also don’t understand why SQLite would be preferable here, considering you will likely also store large binary files alongside your document definition.. What does a db engine give me here?