Filed under: Software, Cool tools, Open Source
OS X-native GIMP coming
StyleMac has
discovered that GIMP is making its way to OS X native goodness, as Mikael Hallendal,
involved with the project, posted on his
blog. For those not familiar with GIMP: it's basically an open source version of Photoshop. No, it isn't an exact,
feature-for-feature alternative, but it's one of the best available analogies I can think of.As far as I've found, there's no ETA on when you'll have one less reason to run X11, but this will certainly be a welcome addition to OS X's graphic edition options.

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Brad said 9:26AM on 1-29-2006
Good. Then I'll use it more often than I do since I hate having to run X11.
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Chris Meisenzahl said 9:37AM on 1-29-2006
Very cool, thanks! Really looking forward to this!
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Chris Meisenzahl said 9:40AM on 1-29-2006
Just had another thought? For both Motorola and Intel? I have a feeling I'll be asking this question a lot in the next 12 months.
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James said 9:53AM on 1-29-2006
This is actually rather bigger than just GIMP. Gtk+ is the widget set that an awful lot of Linux applications use, so a native port of Gtk+ will allow an awful lot of programs that currently require X to run natively.
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Oliver said 10:14AM on 1-29-2006
I thought Seashore already did this..
http://www.tuaw.com/2005/08/30/seashore-native-gimp/
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John said 10:23AM on 1-29-2006
Quote: "it's basically an open source version of Photoshop"
You quite obviously don't know the difference between the two...
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tdungan said 11:30AM on 1-29-2006
Exactly was I was just going to say James.
Chris, since it's OSS that we're talking about, I can guarantee it will be universal. No need to wait 12 months for the answer to that question, unless it actually takes that long to complete the port of the tool kit.
And Thanks for the reminder Oliver...
But this does raise one question for me. Are there any attempts to build a completely OSS version of OS X? More than just the Darwin core, but a complete Core Audio/Image/Video/Data, "QuickTime", Quartz package. One of the biggest advantages of OSS is it's choices - you're not forced to use any specific kernel, file system, package manager, desktop, window manager, etc. But from a developer's standpoint that makes it a LOT more difficult to create a universal linux app.
It may just be "Yet Another OSS Distro" but you have to admit that OS X has a very robust, intelligent design that could be significant in the OSS community. I could see a project like that being successful for BOTH open source and Apple considering their current involvement with the community.
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codeman38 said 4:22PM on 1-29-2006
Seashore doesn't yet offer the full functionality of GIMP, though it is based on the same code base.
Personally, I can't wait for this— one of my biggest annoyances with Mac Gimp is that X11 on Mac doesn't support my Wacom tablet's pressure sensitivity.
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