Regardless, I have seen some interesting concepts and design mockups by some very capable people (like Songtech and Hank) here and on the discord. A lot of those designs and concepts were discussed with the current devs and maintainers (Rodlie, Bonalex, etc) and either rectified or completely changed with one thing in mind: functionality. Being pretty to look at gives Natron zero plus points if its a mess under the hood. What do we absolutely need right now? We need to keep the boat afloat and keep making developmental progress. A UI redesign is not going to help with that. The current UI is almost perfect in that despite some bugs and quirks, it does the job. It’s not confusing. It’s almost 1:1 with one of the leading compositing software out there (Nuke). It does not add a performance overhead. It is not difficult to get used to as a newbie (to newbies not understanding this: just get over it. it’s just another UI).
I genuinely do not understand the obsession with the mess that Blender’s UI (language) is. And I also do not understand why Blender users (especially newbies and people who have only ever used Blender) want every software to follow the exact developmental steps that Blender devs did. I’m not making this up, it’s literally a pattern all over the Blender and Open Source DCCs communities. Similarly GIMP was also hated for NOT being like Ps even though it was never meant to be anything like Ps. I just don’t understand it.
Every DCC out there, whether proprietary or open source has its own design and operational philosophy and the UI should compliment that philosophy. With regards to Blender, a lot of the philosophy that built it in the early years was thrown out of the window when the 2.80 update happened and every update since has just been a duct tape here, wd40 there kinda mashup of half assed fixes to core problems that were introduced by the new developmental philosophy. It is just not an example to follow.
If people think Natron needs a total UI overhaul like Blender, I sincerely request all to research and contemplate both the positives and negatives for each little thing. In the end all we need Natron to be is functional. If you want examples to follow, look at the other software in Natron’s specialist niche: compositing. Software like Nuke, Flame, etc. Does the UI stay the same for each version? Yes and no. Yes because the design language is fixed. No is technically still a yes because things only change if they improve the current.
Please please please take a moment or two to just think about the nature of the software in question and other factors like the development status, etc before suggesting vague ideas. Similar ones have been thrown around for years and havent reached conclusions for one simple reason: the current UI works and most of those ideas add zero value or improvements or are just not worth the time and effort.