Re: [Mypaint-discuss] Planning a MyPain bugfix hackathon
shame,but yes it's better to start this slowly and smartly Looking forward to the event and eventual results! Anecdote/note on event perspective: In a discussion with a friend, I heard the following utterance: Do you know why there are just a few opensource graphic programs, but hundreds of feature-packed hex editors? Because programmers have the knowledge and motivation to create the tools they need, while the artists lack either or both. Certainly a striking quote. The first is the truest issue,to me. I have plenty of motivation, but knowledge... And it's not a matter of learning ,it's that I haven't got a mind suited to coding. I can do it,but with much difficulty. And I'm an artist who is a bit more technical then most. (in my experience) Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2012 13:15:40 +0100 From: s...@hackerspace.pl To: mypaint-discuss@gna.org Subject: Re: [Mypaint-discuss] Planning a MyPain bugfix hackathon I'm postponing the event till 2013. Still too many points of failure, but this _will_ happen eventually. Some details: - We still haven't got a reliable infrastructure for food preparation and beverage distribution, and the expected deadline for these was postponed several times. - Ongoing workspace rearrangements. - I have a feeling we may encounter possible promotional issues at this stage (and time of year). - Prior to such event I want to hold a few talks about creative process with opensource software, briefly present a workflow with Blender, MyPaint, Gimp and Krita, attract/build the artistic and programmer/gamedev audiences. I'm aiming to make this a stable, recurrent event, and establish a good base of programmers/users/ugrammers around it, so it will be wiser to actually put some more preparation into it rather that rush it just because of Windows users and the GTK+ bug ;)). I hope this catches on, so keep your fingers crossed! Anecdote/note on event perspective: In a discussion with a friend, I heard the following utterance: Do you know why there are just a few opensource graphic programs, but hundreds of feature-packed hex editors? Because programmers have the knowledge and motivation to create the tools they need, while the artists lack either or both. ___ Mypaint-discuss mailing list Mypaint-discuss@gna.org https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/mypaint-discuss ___ Mypaint-discuss mailing list Mypaint-discuss@gna.org https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/mypaint-discuss
Re: [Mypaint-discuss] Planning a MyPain bugfix hackathon
I'm postponing the event till 2013. Still too many points of failure, but this _will_ happen eventually. Some details: - We still haven't got a reliable infrastructure for food preparation and beverage distribution, and the expected deadline for these was postponed several times. - Ongoing workspace rearrangements. - I have a feeling we may encounter possible promotional issues at this stage (and time of year). - Prior to such event I want to hold a few talks about creative process with opensource software, briefly present a workflow with Blender, MyPaint, Gimp and Krita, attract/build the artistic and programmer/gamedev audiences. I'm aiming to make this a stable, recurrent event, and establish a good base of programmers/users/ugrammers around it, so it will be wiser to actually put some more preparation into it rather that rush it just because of Windows users and the GTK+ bug ;)). I hope this catches on, so keep your fingers crossed! Anecdote/note on event perspective: In a discussion with a friend, I heard the following utterance: Do you know why there are just a few opensource graphic programs, but hundreds of feature-packed hex editors? Because programmers have the knowledge and motivation to create the tools they need, while the artists lack either or both. ___ Mypaint-discuss mailing list Mypaint-discuss@gna.org https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/mypaint-discuss
Re: [Mypaint-discuss] Planning a MyPain bugfix hackathon
hi spin Ah, perfect if you have a computer graphics background, I needn't have worried :-) For some of the GTK bugs workarounds are possible in MyPaint. Sometimes this would involve code refactoring, which is maybe not the greatest starter task. The platform-related GTK tablet bugs are harder. However, testing can also be very helpful, especially if a certain bug can be tracked down to a certain window manager, gtk theme, or to a certain tablet, or on Windows, to a certain wintab or driver version. If you have some developers skilled with Windows, there is tumagonx's build environment (not sure if it works with the latest git). Setting up a the toolchain to build GTK+ itself for Windows can take days. But taking an existing installer and hacking only the .py files is easy. There are some development builds after 1.0.0 for Windows, search the forum for that. Regards Martin On Mon, Oct 29, 2012 at 03:36:30PM +0100, spin wrote: On 10/28/2012 12:34, Martin Renold wrote: hi spin That's great news! And a good reason not to rush this release. Warsaw is too far for me to travel, and I don't have a very much time for MyPaint lately. But I'll try to be on IRC to point people to the right place in the code. If it is definitive, tell us when you have a date fixed. Make sure you have some graphic tablets around at the event. With only the mouse it is hard to understand how this program is actually used. The most motivating way to find a task is to try sketching for one hour (editor closed). Don't try to get a good result, but create something. If you're completely out of ideas, start drawing a checkerboard pattern. After that, you'll have your own ideas about what should be improved. Fresh users will run into problems that we've learned to avoid. It would be great to make this program even more accessible to new users. The most un-motivating way is to go through every bug in the tracker. Or for me, to look through my private TODO list. But I'll dig out some likely targets for you. Everything that's important should already be on the bugtracker. Someone told me there were problems creating an account at the bugtracker. Gna isn't the sexiest site any more, but it worked for us, so far. If you haven't got an account, could you try to create one now maybe? Regards Martin Hey Martin, I would like to hold the hackathon two or three weeks from now (3/4 or 10/11 Nov), but I'll post the definitive information once it's ready, we're still solving a few infrastructure issues. I'm trying to speed things up, so it becomes definitve, and we can get some bugfixes done for 1.1.0. Sorry for the lack of introduction... I have a pretty good experience with computer graphics, I'm working professionally as a computer graphic/DTP operator, and drawing for over a decade now, both traditionally and digitally. I know my way around most of the software out there, Adobe PSP/Ilustrator (I also curse them to hell almost professionally as well) Gimp, Alchemy, Sai, Opencanvas, I used Corel Painter in the past, and I also work in Blender (btw - great interface for setting brush size and hardness in sculpt mode). One of the reasons I'm doing this is actually MyPaint's user experience and workflow - fullscreen operation, keyboard shortcuts, menus pop-up on tab hit, zoom and scrolling, the oil/watercolour/acrylic blending brushes, the experimental set... this stuff is just so captivating and intuitive for me that I decided to help out somehow. Too cool to be left alone :) Some things can be sped up, and the interface can be even more streamlined, but I don't want to focus on these things right now. One at a time. Still a lot better than Sai and OC as-is. I'm not a programmer, but I know enough theory a to prepare this event, and there is enough great people around to consult when necessary. I know what questions to ask, how to prepare data, and how to present it in a motivation-inducing way. The people at the hackathon will encounter those problems for the first time, so they will have a fresh and task-oriented perspective (I'll look to that), which is one of the wonders of it - they don't have the looming sense of obligation the full-time developers do, and come with a fresh mind and a fresh heart, so to say. I had no problem creating an account at Gna, everything works fine! I'll read through the buglist a few times, focusing on confirmed. I see that we have a lot of GTK-related bugs, is there any way to get past this without diving into GTK development itself? best, spin ___ Mypaint-discuss mailing list Mypaint-discuss@gna.org https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/mypaint-discuss -- Martin Renold ___ Mypaint-discuss mailing list Mypaint-discuss@gna.org https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/mypaint-discuss
Re: [Mypaint-discuss] Planning a MyPain bugfix hackathon
On 28 October 2012 01:28, spin s...@hackerspace.pl wrote: On 10/28/2012 00:41, Jon Nordby wrote: One bug-related suggestion. How about doing bug-triaging during the hackathon? This is an activity which in my experience scales very well with more people involved, and is easy to get into also for those that are new to the project and/or technologies (toolkit, programming language etc). It is not exactly the sexiest task, but having a clean bug-tracker really helps with the productivity (and motivation) of developers and new contributors. Hey Jon, This is a great suggestion! I will consider doing bugtracking depending on the amount of people participating and the direction the event will take, as it's still in preparation. I'll consult it around with people in the hackerspace as well. I want to do at least two of these events, and I expect about 60% of participants covering both, so getting them to know their way around the code on the first occasion would be great. On the other side, I want to have a few harder tasks on the ready, because some people may lose motivation over simple bugtrack choring (and their resources would be suboptimally allocated as well). I'll go through my personal TODO and bugtracker to see what I can find. Regarding presence, it should be possible online - we have an IRC channel (irc.freenode.net #hackerspace-pl), and we'll set up an etherpad for the event. Getting a voip with video stream should be possible as well, if needed. If you or any other developer would want to participate online, that would be great, since you know your way around the code, and will be able to answer questions that may otherwise take considerable amounts of time. I will be present online to help you out, if the time fits. I would request that we use #mypaint IRC channel though, as many of the questions/answers/topics will probably be of interest to the people that are already there. -- Jon Nordby - www.jonnor.com ___ Mypaint-discuss mailing list Mypaint-discuss@gna.org https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/mypaint-discuss
