Nick Hanson

*bump* Perhaps I missed a more recent post stating this feature was no longer going to be implemented (it is a rather old thread) but as of this thread the indications seemed to be the feature was "coming soon". Not only did it not make it into v2.6 (as expected) it didn't make it into the 2.7 series either nor has it made it to v3.0. For whatever reason a fair number of games I play only output screenshots (using the in-game mechanic) in TGA and it would be really nice to be able to see what the heck these things were without having to open each one.

With the two radial control blocks in the bottom corners it gives me the impression that it's made for a handheld device and those are for use with your thumbs. I think MS has a touchscreen keyboard that is split into two radial sections in the bottom corners like that for use on the UMPC or whatever the heck that handheld computer thing they're selling is called.

You're assumption is incorrect. We have MINIMAL say in when we can upgrade the OS on our corporate desktops. That decision has already been made by others and we won't be getting rid of Win2k till 2008 at the earliest. We DO have a lot of say in what applications we use to do our jobs. There are restrictions of course: budgetary, legal, as well as policy. Budgetary is fine with Paint.Net 'cause it's free (beer). Legal is fine with Paint.Net because the license permits its use. Policy is fine with Paint.Net as long as we standardize on it and each dev isn't using a different app or version. We've been happily using Paint.Net for a while now but the version we are able to use will soon be unsupported. Since the source is available and we are developers we are asking for Rick's opinion of a possible fork. We are NOT asking him to DO anything and we are aware that it is LEGAL for us to do the fork. We have a great deal of respect for Rick and we aren't going to do it if he does not want us to, call it professional courtesy. Your situation is entirely different from ours. We developers are not CHOOSING not to upgrade. If it were up to us we would do so. It's NOT up to us. We do PLAN to upgrade though it's just a long way off (2008 at the earliest). In the meantime we are considering supporting a Win2k version of Paint.Net. That's true from a strictly LEGAL point of view. Many developers become quite upset however when someone comes along and forks their project. Especially when the project is still under active development. So sure we aren't REQUIRED to get Ricks permission but we're asking for it anyway out of respect for Rick and the excellent product he's given us. I'm going to assume you mean it woudn't be a problem LEGALLY. We agree there (see above). It would most certainly be a problem technically however and again we have ZERO intention of backporting improvements from 3.x to Win2k. Our intent is simply to support (i.e. provide fixes for bugs that pop up when Rick's solution would be: upgrade to the latest non-Win2k version) and possibly add printer and scanning support in Win2k. I couldn't disagree more. Making software work on the hardware you have is NOT what open sourse is all about. It's about freedom not hardware but this isn't a discussion I want to take up in this thread. We aren't DEMANDING anything of Rick. Quite the contratrary we are ASKING him his opinion of what we want to do even though we aren't strictly REQUIRED to do so. We're doing it out of respect for him and the tool he has provided for us and we aren't asking to him to DO anything.

I have no idea what this means. What question stands? It makes no difference at all to us that Windows 2000 is developed or supported. We're developers. The OS is supported by the Systems/Networking people (not us). Likewise it is their decision, NOT OURS, on when we can upgrade the OS. If it was our choise we'd upgrade the second Vista came out but then we don't have to deploy or support it either. They've decided we aren't upgrading to Vista till 2008 or so and thus we have a problem with a tool we using being unsupported until then. Since the source is available and we are developers a fork becomes an option. I've already stated all of this I don't know what it is you don't understand. You have it completely wrong. I'm not asking Rick to DO anything, he should continue to work on v3. If we just take the source, post it up on sourceforge and start hacking away at it many developers would be pretty upset by this even if it is LEGAL to do so. So we're asking Rick how he feals about this because we have a great deal of respect for him and his work. This is irrelevent to the discussion. I have no idea where you got this from but we have ZERO intention of attempting to backport features of Paint.Net 3.x to the 2.x series. We want to have a public code base to fix any bugs that may crop up after Rick stops supporting the version and to add features that Rick doesn't even have that we would like (namely print and scanning support on Win2k). Again WE are going to do this, we aren't asking Rick to do anything but give us permission to do so. No, you have clearly misunderstood the entire request. I've already stated I think Rick's course at present is correct (i.e. dropping support for Win2k in v3+). We are a VERY small portion of Rick's user base and it makes no sense for Rick to change development to support us. Even if we go forward I've already stated we're likely to switch to v3+ when we finally do go to Vista (but thats quite a ways off and our concern is what happens until then.) Why would we pay Rick to carry Win2k baggage along with it? It's a mute point however because we are a group of developers and have ZERO budget of our own. I don't represent a corporation I represent a group of developers who work in a corporate environment, there's a HUGE difference.

I'm not sure what you're asking here. If you're asking why someone who is unwilling to upgrade from Windows 2000 to XP or Vista need to upgrade to Paint.Net 3+ then they don't. It's not possible. Paint.Net 2.x runs just fine on Windows 2000 though and when Paint.Net moves to 3+ all those users (which is admittedly a TINY percentage of the overall Paint.Net user base) will have an unsupported and no longer developed piece of software. Well you're probably not a programmer either. In my situation I have an installed user base who uses a tool that is going to (has?) become unsupported. The user base likes the tool and are themselves programmers and the source for the tool is available. While it doesn't make sense for Rick to derail progress for such a small user base it does seem potentially worthwhile for a fork to occur so that we may continue to support the product ourselves (and perhaps pick up some outside contributions) until such a time as we meet the requirements to upgrade to a supported version.

First let me say I didn't mean to imply that I beleived the direction you are going is not correct. I believe you are doing the right thing for the future of Paint.Net in moving to newer technology that the user base will all eventually migrate to. The point of the fork would NOT be to draw users from Paint.Net, I don't see it competing with Paint.Net at all because it's specifically targeting users that you no longer support. That said I represent a group of people that still have many Win2k systems (primarily in corporate environments). I already KNOW my user base and I'm sure it's a TINY fraction of the number of people who download Paint.Net but again the point isn't to compete with Paint.Net. These corporate Win2k boxes will NEVER be UPGRADED to XP. XP offers virtually ZERO value to a corporate seat over an already installed Win2k box. New seats are purchased with XP but in order to standardize applications all new seats will likewise use this fork. Eventually all these Win2k computers be REPLACED with new ones running Vista at which time it is VERY likely that we would move to Paint.Net version 3+. Corporate policy however states that this will not occur however until Vista sp1 is released or 1 year has passed since the Vista launch whichever is LONGER. This means from the point you released the last Paint.Net 2.x version (already happened?) to sometime in 2008 the people I represent would have no support and no updates to the product they use, thus the fork. As for making it easier to port to Mono that really is just an afterthought and there is no specific plans in that respect. It may very well be that there is nothing to do in order to achieve that and of course if the problem lied in mono we aren't going to make work arounds in the fork when fixing mono would be the better solution. That said the things you mention are great candidates. Making a linux installer, replacing the shell extension with a nautilus extension, and removing the photo printing wizard in favor of a linux specific print dialog. That last one works out great anyway because removing that XP specific wizard and adding a Win2k compatible print dialog is one of the desired features anyway. The goal here would be to be able to standardize our corporate tools even across platforms (something we don't currently do but has some appeal) though admittedly this is probably not going to happen. Personally I'll continue to use the latest version of Paint.Net on my HOME PC as it's currently running XP and I'll likely upgrade it to Vista early in 2007. That said I'll be running Win2k on my work PC for quite some time yet (2008?) and so will many of my coworkers. I guess the question we are asking ourselves is how many people does it take to merit a fork. We are in the dozens only and while that is insignificant to you it seems like a good enough number to us. Plus if we put the code repository in a public vcs (sourceforge?) maybe we'll also pick up some random outside contributions (we aren't banking on that though). Anyway nothing is certain yet like I said we're just testing the waters.

Rick, First let me say this is just a general inquiry not a statement of intent. That said since v3.0 no longer supports Win2k and never fully supported it (printing/scanning) and I assume the 2.x series will no longer be developed what are your feelings on having your project forked? More specifically: The idea would be to take the source for the last 2.x version and use that as the basis for a project. The main goal of the project would be to continue supporting Win2k, expand that support to possibly include printing/scanning, and potentially even try to rework some things to make a mono version easier to develop in the future. This fork would of course not continue to be called Paint.Net but you and the other Paint.Net developers would be credited as appropriate. Also it would be made clear that Paint.Net did form the basis of the project. I believe this is all allowable by the licensing but I'm looking for both clarification on that as well as a personal statement on your opinion of this. If this were to happen, and it is far from certain that it would, I would only want it to do so with your approval even if it is not strictly required by the license. Again, just testing the waters not a statement of intent.

I'm confused. Doesn't the Donate button on the website go to Washington State University? Does this OneCare ad revenue go there to? Do they want more money to host or something? If you would like to derive money from Paint.Net (which is reasonable consider how much time/effort you put into the project) why not just make the donate button funds go to you (and your fellow developers) instead of Washington State University?

Just select the area you want to crop and use crop to selection. If you want to move it around just use move selection.

Just out of curiosity what is involved in writing a basic plugin? Is is as simple and either inheriting from a Paint.Net plugin base class or implementing a Paint.Net Plugin Interface? Are there a bunch of nice C# methods a plugin writer can call and events we can bind our code to? Or is it lower level with a ton of PInvokes, COM Interop stuff, and/or custom attributes and such. I'm curious because if it's anything like the first two I might give it a try once there is some documentation but I have no interest in manually searching through the source code of the whole app for how to hook stuff or doing anything in that last part.

Silent Bob!?!

I'm curious, I don't have any mult-page Tiff files handy but if I recall correctly my old fax software used to recieve faxes as tiffs and all the pages were in a single tiff. Does anyone know if Paint.Net supports multi-page tiffs (perhaps each page as a layer) or does it just load the first page?

I use Print Screen for full screen screenshots and I believe it's Alt+Print Screen for the current window which is fine (might want to note that in the documentation if it's not for those that don't know though). Anyway that works great but it would also be nice to be able to draw a specific rectangle on the screen and just capture that area. The Color Picker works great but is resticted to the Canvas. It would be nice if you could use it to get the rgb data from things that are outside the canvas area or even the app window. In both of the above it would also be nice if there was an option (can be turned on or off) to auto-minimize the app when the action is started then restore when complete, for examples: Click Screenshot Rect tool -> App minimizes Click (and hold) anywhere to draw/size rect When you release the mouse the app restores with image from rect in clipboard or even movable selection in app Click Color Picker tool, app minimizes Right or left click anywhere on screen to set primary or secondary color to match App restores Again this would be an option as often you will not want the app to minize but it does come in usefull. AlsoIn the color picker the color pallette would show the rgb value of the pixel it is over (even outside the window) as you drag the mouse around, maybe esc could cancel or something if you then decide you don't want to replace your primary/secondary color. Anyway just some ideas, thanx for the great program.

I'm not sure if this will help but if you go to the Open Dialog and change the view mode to thumbnails you can resize the window and see your each of your images to see which ones you might want to edit. This may be good enough or they may simply be too small to show the detail level you need but I thought I'd put it out there.

I'm curious, if you're not looking for any animation ability in your request and don't even care if the sequence of images is numbered then why does simply loading each picture into a different layer and flipping through the layers not do what you want? Am I totally misunderstanding what you are saying?