Weekly recap — 6 July 2025

Libre Arts
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Week highlights: new digiKam release, new features coming to GIMP, Inkscape, and Ardour.

GIMP

CmykStudent created a patch adding support for MyPaint v2 brushes (1.5+ really) with the exception of spectral blending. There are three additional changes coming with this patch:

  • A new Posterize blending mode for the MyPaint Brush tool.
  • Zoom factor and canvas rotation mode are now taken into consideration when painting.
  • A new tool option named Gain, which is a multiplier for input pressure.

digiKam 8.7.0

The new version comes with multiple improvements:

  • Optional background face recognition.
  • The application will now show the next best face match (where applicable) if the user rejects the first match.
  • digiKam now has a test to discover if it can use OpenCL- or CUDA-based GPU-side processing for running AI pipelines.
  • The Batch Queue Manager now features a plugin for AI-based automatic rotation.

See here for the full list of changes and some illustrations.

Inkscape

Martin Owens patched the PDF code to correctly apply document ICC profiles as well as device-cmyk with and without ICC profiles on exporting.

Jabier Arraiza is working on Trim Shape LPE — a live path effect that allows hiding parts of strokes. Here is a screenshot from Jabier’s video:

Tavmjong Bah is adding hatch to path functionality.

There are now merge requests from at least two of the five GSoC students. Aarav Oswal is adding on-canvas spellchecking (based on libspelling) and Fatma Omara is adding artwork recoloring functionality to the Fill & Stroke dock.

FreeCAD

The major upstream project news is that WandererFan is retiring from TechDraw maintenance and active involvement with the FreeCAD Project Association. So that’s one less maintainer in the projecе, which sucks. The workbench has seen some great action in the v1.0 development cycle, so hopefully some of those contributors will return to deliver even more and take over.

In other news, Grub created a new addon to track the release of new weekly builds, and Pieter Hijma got an NLnet grant to resume his work on the Ondsel Lens add-on. Both the Ondsel Lens code (a FreeCAD-specific online PDM system) and the Lens addon for FreeCAD are now hosted by the FreeCAD org on GitHub.

Zolko’s Assembly4 workbench has moved from GitHub to Codeberg. When I say “moved”, what I really mean is that he posted a threatening message to the FreeCAD team, and GitHub banned him, so he reopened the shop elsewhere. He also launched a fork of FreeCAD 0.21, “the last that remains compatible with earlier versions of FreeCAD user data”.

Ardour

Most recently, Robin removed the possibility of building Ardour with system-wide installed GTK/GDK2 instead of Ardour’s forks (YTK/YDK). The commit message specifically says:

After patching gtk/ytk to add touch support and macOS rendering, upstream gtk+2 is no longer an option

Some of the conversations around this spilled to the next week, and I’ve seen a lot of completely misinformed opinions, with some people even claiming that this is somehow a retribution for major desktop environments dropping X11 support or for some “political” actions by GTK developers. None of that is remotely true.

Ardour doesn’t use much of GTK in the first place, but they use enough of it to want to avoid another toolkit port. The changes they introduced to YTK/YDK make builds against system-wide GTK2 less functional as compared to official builds. So there you have it.

But most work lately is about pianoroll windows. It’s still too early to talk about the potential v9 release timeline, and it will likely stay that way for at least a few more months.

Artworks

Some practice by Mathieu Boyer, made with Blender and Photoshop:

Talking in the kitchen by npc, made with Krita:

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://librearts.org/2025/07/week-recap-6-july-2025/
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Zolko’s “threatening message” only said that because some people have committed financial fraud they are open to litigation, but he will not litigate if they hand over the passwords. That’s not really threatening, it’s more of a statement of fact (that they have committed financial fraud), which might be true or not, I don’t know. But very silly to complain about threats. Especially without addressing the claim of financial fraud. To me, as an outsider, such complaints seem like misdirection aimed at making people focus on the form instead of the substance, hinting at Zolko’s statements about financial fraud being true.

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Not threatening at all! Not even the martial arts hint :smiley:

Oh, it was addressed alright.

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Umm… are you incapable of understanding written text, or is there some cognitive disability behind your passive aggressive sarcasm?

The only reference to his martial arts was that it has taught him to give people a chance to back off. At no point did he imply, or even hint at, using any martial arts against anyone else! Anyone with even half a brain understands that, so how were you unable to?

Certainly not in the link provided. If it was somewhere else I have no idea, I was only commenting about the page that was linked to. If you know better, please provide a link.

I don’t know who’s in the right and who’s in the wrong, I just want FreeCAD to be the best possible. So far that has been realthunder’s branch, it’s just miles ahead of anything else. Devs that are unhappy with mainline FreeCAD maybe could move over to realthunder’s branch instead, hint hint… :grin:

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I am curious … Do you want a nice timeout to calm down and enjoy the nice weather outside?

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Assuming you truly are curious about that then no, I’m perfectly calm.
It was an honest question. I gave him the benefit of the doubt, instead of presuming malevolence from him, because maybe there’s some other problem preventing him from understanding English, which would be perfectly understandable and something we would have to work around somehow in future interaction. (Personally I know mostly swearwords in his native language, although those usually get you surprisingly far in russian. :sweat_smile:)

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well then let me spell it our clearly for you. the language chosen was not really in the bounds of our community guidelines.

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Sir, this is a Wendy’s.

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Ok, I’ll check out the guideline details. And just to be sure, was it the question whether there is a cognitive disability that was the problem? Or was it the question why prokoudine did not understand the clear text referenced? Or that I called out prokoudine’s sarcasm? Or which specific language? I really don’t want to break any rules again (and I really should’ve read the guidelines earlier, sorry about that), so I would appreciate clarification, thank you!

And I assume that the unfounded sarcastic knee-jerk contradictions of prokoudine was also out of bounds, and that he got a private message saying as much, right?

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I’m still waiting for your link to where the financial fraud issue was addressed, as per your claim.

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This specific language:

This is completely unacceptable, you need to be kind, clear, and not passive aggressive. If you continue using your previous tone, you’ll be removed from this community.

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Observing this pattern of behavior is kinda tantalizing.

Mr Z. makes personal attacks on the FC forum, gets temporary suspensions one after another, resumes personal attacks every single time the suspension is lifted, and eventually gets banned. People complain about censorship.

Mr Z. posts a threatening (on multiple levels) message on GitHub and gets nuked from orbit by GH admins. People who don’t mind Mr. Z’s behavior complain about censorship, resort to personal attacks on the FC forum, get moderated, and complain about censorship.

Now you come along, express no disagreement with Mr. Z’s behavior, resort to personal attacks, get a telling-off from two moderators already. And now you are an inch away from complaining about censorship as well.

Catering to your needs while you behave this way is almost the definition of enabling. I think I would rather not do that.

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Would something like “Why do you think it says anything like that?” be acceptable if I wished to know why the other person is misunderstanding something that very clearly says something completely different than what they claim/imply? I mean, would that contain some of that “unacceptable language”? Or what question would be more clear, and also kind?

Thank you for just threatening me instead of simply removing my account or something. (Maybe you have also studied martial arts that has taught you to give other people an opportunity to back off. :smile:) In any case, I appreciate it, thank you!
And just to be clear, I haven’t continued the “unacceptable language” in any of my subsequent messages, right?

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That would be an improvement yes.

What is clear and obvious to one person is not always clear and obvious to another. If you want to find out why, using a civil and understanding tone in your writing will go a long way in helping you gain the understanding you seek.

It doesn’t really seem like you’re going to gain that understanding though, so maybe it’s time to just let it go.

However, you seemed to have completely missed this part about not being passive agressive, as comment listed below completely miss the mark:

Please stop.

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To be fair, they both were commenting on the very same snippet.

Also, if you felt that the attack was personal I apologize. I don’t know you personally, and I have no ill will towards you at all. I only dislike untruth, and it’s obviously untrue that the quoted message contains any threat of using martial arts. Well, at least I think that’s blindingly obvious.

Excuse me? It sounds like you’re judging me for something I have not done. Do you think that’s fair?

What? You made a claim. I asked for a link supporting your claim. That’s just basic burden of proof. The only thing it has to do with enabling is that it enables logically sound reasoning. Are you saying that you don’t want to provide any support for any of your claims? That’s your prerogative, I suppose, but… eh… Why?

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What? Sorry, it was most certainly NOT meant to be passive aggressive in any way, but to be extremely clear. Surely there is some misunderstanding here. Do you think I was sarcastic when I thanked you for only threatening to kick me instead of simply kicking me? There was zero sarcasm meant there! I understand that sarcasm can be difficult in text, but I assure you, I did no mean to put any sarcasm there at all. I really appreciated that! (Again, no sarcasm, please believe me!)