norman.walsh.name: Comments on /2006/06/18/xcfBahHumbug http://norman.walsh.name/2006/06/18/xcfBahHumbug/comments.atom 2006-08-22T17:59:57Z Comment 1 on /2006/06/18/xcfBahHumbug http://norman.walsh.name/2006/06/18/xcfBahHumbug#comment0001 2006-06-18T20:31:43Z 2006-06-18T20:31:43Z Gregor J. Rothfuss 15610e6bcf9e4dfb1d8ee9749292929e8f7282c8 http://greg.abstrakt.ch

i wrote about the cultural issues around open source interoperability. i have been wondering how the open source community could be provided with more incentives to take these issues seriously.

 Comment 2 on /2006/06/18/xcfBahHumbug http://norman.walsh.name/2006/06/18/xcfBahHumbug#comment0002 2006-06-19T10:05:57Z 2006-06-19T10:05:57Z Sven Neumann 133b89eceb2b3c9e0b8d53886094276490687989

There's some sort of a proposal for an XCF file format successor at http://pippin.gimp.org/xcf2/ and it's the GIMP developers declared goal to introduce such a format with the switch to GEGL. Since GEGL is just waiting to be introduced to GIMP after the 2.4 release, XCF is going to be replaced by a truly open format in a not too distant future.

You should understand that XCF was never meant to be a file format for exchanging graphics between different applications, it's the GIMP default file format and its only purpose is to be able to store the complete state of the image as edited in GIMP.

 Comment 3 on /2006/06/18/xcfBahHumbug http://norman.walsh.name/2006/06/18/xcfBahHumbug#comment0003 2006-06-19T10:15:27Z 2006-06-19T10:15:27Z Sven Neumann 133b89eceb2b3c9e0b8d53886094276490687989 sven.gimp.org

Also let me add that Mark Pilgrim completely misses the point since the file format is documented. The documentation may be somewhat rudimentary, but together with the source code, it provides enough details to decode an XCF file. Other applications like ImageMagick have successfully added support for reading XCF based on this.

The format isn't deliberatlely undocumented, we only discourage other applications from adopting it because we think that it's not well suited as an image exchange format. If another format was developed that would be open and suited our needs, GIMP would be one of the first applications to adopt it.

 Comment 4 on /2006/06/18/xcfBahHumbug http://norman.walsh.name/2006/06/18/xcfBahHumbug#comment0004 2006-06-21T13:25:22Z 2006-06-21T13:25:22Z Mark e42bca26f11d2457e082db2f2bc754f91dccd541 http://diveintomark.org/

"""together with the source code, it provides enough details to decode an XCF file"""

This is a very dangerous sentiment, and unfortunately it's all too common in open source projects. The source is THE ABSOLUTE WORST form of documentation, and statements like that do nothing but impede real interoperability.

On this topic, I highly recommend the dumbing-down of programming, which was written eight years ago (and is still online!) -- the author nails this point. Coding is the act of incremental forgetting. Eventually all you're left with is code, without any human expertise to back it up, fix it, improve it, or interoperate with it.