http://www.osnews.com/story/14689/Porting_Paint_NET_to_Mono Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Tue, 10 Nov 2009 06:50:48 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://osnews.com/thread?127229 http://osnews.com/thread?127229 Holy... that's pretty sweet. Tue, 23 May 2006 17:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (markbrophy) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?127230 http://osnews.com/thread?127230 Something to be noted here is that Paint.Net wasn't developed with Linux in mind so in thoery if you start a project having portability in mind (Linux,BSD,Solaris) the problems would be minimum. Tue, 23 May 2006 17:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Mitarai) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?127232 http://osnews.com/thread?127232 I use Paint.NET any time I need to do some quick photo manipulation. It handles 8MP photos with ease - cropping/resizing/etc.

I have it set as my default image editor on my Windows box.

Porting it to Mono is a great thing! Tue, 23 May 2006 18:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (umccullough) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?127234 http://osnews.com/thread?127234 It looks like a Swing app from 1997. Tue, 23 May 2006 18:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (tmack) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?127235 http://osnews.com/thread?127235 This is definitely good news for SkyOS users. The idea of porting Paint.NET was brought up on the forums a few months ago, but the conclusion was reached that it wouldn't work with Mono out of the box. With this new news, the possibility of it working on SkyOS improve dramatically. Tue, 23 May 2006 18:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (mattst88) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?127236 http://osnews.com/thread?127236 Paint.NET-- I love it. I don't know of any equivelants on either Linux or Mac, which is too bad, as I find the GIP too advanced, and, well, Photoshop too expensive AND too advanced. Tue, 23 May 2006 18:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?127244 http://osnews.com/thread?127244 It looks like a Swing app from 1997.

It's because the fonts are crap. There are much better freetype fonts. Hinting probably isn't on too. Tue, 23 May 2006 18:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (slate) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?127247 http://osnews.com/thread?127247 Who cares what it looks like...jeez. It gets the job done, in a jiffy - with an intuitive UI, decent image format support, layer capabilities, excellent history features and fairly quick as well! Tue, 23 May 2006 18:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (umccullough) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?127277 http://osnews.com/thread?127277 Anyone got a source repository link for this? I am keen to have a play Tue, 23 May 2006 20:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (nzjrs) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?127288 http://osnews.com/thread?127288 well, try krita 1.5.x that is an kde application. it even supports cmyk and profiles/color management. Tue, 23 May 2006 21:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (riha) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?127298 http://osnews.com/thread?127298 In October I imported a version of Paint.Net, a paint application built with .NET into our repository.

The source is supposed to be in the repository. I didn't see it here:
http://svn.myrealbox.com/ or here:
http://www.mono-project.com/Software

I have not tried subversion directly, but here's the info:
http://www.mono-project.com/AnonSVN Tue, 23 May 2006 21:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (KenJackson) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?127340 http://osnews.com/thread?127340 It looks like a Swing app from 1997.

Well, even though you're right this is a Mono article, so you're bound to get modded down.

You do have to ask yourself where they're heading with this. If they're pushing Mono as a cross-platform development platform, primarily based around .Net compatibility, then they're simply going to come up against the same problems that Java, Swing, SWT (SWT uncovers a huge number of issues day by day) and Qt have come up against for the past ten years. It has to fit in with the native environment enough, but be able to reproduce enough common functionality so that things will work cross-platform. That's a very complex, pretty much impossible, thing to achieve from the way they're looking at it.

Additionally, if they're betting on porting Windows.Forms, and other apps dependant on Windows specific interfaces, unmodified (and this was hardly unmodified from a Mono point of view) then they're constantly dependant on what Microsoft does at their end. Windows.Forms applications are designed to work on Windows - period. For example:

"Instead of planning the port, I kind of brute forced the port on my spare time. About one third of the way in manually replacing the code in my favorite editor, I realized that I should just have implemented the DotNetWidgets interface and be done with it. The result was a 129 line source file that in one hour gave me everything I needed to get Paint.NET building without this dependency."

That's just the tip of a somewhat larger iceberg of implementing every nuance that may occur.

We also have great native apps here in the open source world such as the GIMP of course, and also Krita, which has turned into a really fantastic app. I'm not convinced of the value of porting a Microsoft backed application as some sort of showcase at the expense of what's available. Tue, 23 May 2006 23:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (segedunum) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?127343 http://osnews.com/thread?127343 It's because the fonts are crap. There are much better freetype fonts. Hinting probably isn't on too.

I think he was referring more to the fact that it just doesn't fit in. Tue, 23 May 2006 23:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (segedunum) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?127428 http://osnews.com/thread?127428 Looks like the standard linux fonts to me. Of course hinting is on. No one runs unhinted because it just gets blurry. Wed, 24 May 2006 04:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Bending Unit) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?127429 http://osnews.com/thread?127429 >It looks like a Swing app from 1997.

Are you sure, it doesn't look like SWING at all to me?

I wonder if this would also work on the Mac? Wed, 24 May 2006 05:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (snowflake) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?127435 http://osnews.com/thread?127435 Seems to me that the font rendering equals what is known as "best shapes" in Gnome.

Anti-aliazing on, hinting on.

I sometimes run apps without hinting, but only because I use large fonts in Gnome, in 1600*1200 on 17" inch monitor.

In GNUstep I'm using hinting, due to smaller fontsizes. In lowe resolutions hinting is a must. Without hinting in low resolutions, I'll get dizzy from all the dark-greyish blops (apparently letters, but that's hard to see).

The font in use is Arial, and it works quite well with FreeType. It's just so cold and industrial. I prefer warmer fonts. Wed, 24 May 2006 06:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (dylansmrjones) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?127438 http://osnews.com/thread?127438 They should relax the forms implementation, maybe standardize the api and allow for other window/widget systems to be used. Wed, 24 May 2006 06:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Tuishimi) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?127460 http://osnews.com/thread?127460 This kind of over generalisation is really wrong and what causes useless flamewars.
I don't run hinted fonts, never have at home.
It all depends on your screen. I have a 22' CRT in 1600x1200, and never had to use hints, I always use AA and never got any blurry font, even with very small ones. So I guess I always had very good monitors. And I use the standard Bitstream Vera (and now DejaVu) fonts.
So your experience can't describe the experience of everyone. Wed, 24 May 2006 09:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Ookaze) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?127489 http://osnews.com/thread?127489 Their final goal should be to compile and run unmodified source, or even windows .NET binary (bytecode) of as much as possible .NET applications in Mono (cover some of Wine goals). Wed, 24 May 2006 14:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (siki_miki) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?127502 http://osnews.com/thread?127502 In the end, the fact that it was ported should speak for itself. The great news here is that before there was no Paint.NET in Linux and now there is. This is thanks to Mono Framework and to Mono developers that have made it happen.

I think it is a big win for everyone. The GIMP is awesome and now disputes this fact. However, just as there are different kinds of motor vehicles there can be different software tools that serve audiences with diverse technical background and taste, even it these applications could be consider as part of the same genre.

Mono is making a lot of progress in less than 5 years. How long have Qt and Java been around? Both Qt framework and Java's GUI toolkits are great. Once more variety is good.

Mono simply rocks hard! ^_^ Wed, 24 May 2006 15:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (marpaco) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?127521 http://osnews.com/thread?127521 They should relax the forms implementation, maybe standardize the api and allow for other window/widget systems to be used.

Well that's certainly a possibility, especially if they're going for Mono as being used for cross-platform development. But you then end up with a lot of the problems that other toolkits have - especially SWT. It's a hugely complex, and bug ridden, thing to accomplish. Wed, 24 May 2006 16:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (segedunum) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?127574 http://osnews.com/thread?127574 It is better if they focus on one or two toolkits and get them right. So many of the FOSS kits are half backed, in complete or buggy. Wed, 24 May 2006 20:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (snowflake) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?127681 http://osnews.com/thread?127681 Porting paint.net has only so much significance as showcasing that the technology is portable. There are much slicker and more powerful graphics suites in Linux like Gimp, kpaint or imagemagick. Thu, 25 May 2006 09:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jbalmer) Comments