Would this possibly open up the opportunity for dev’s to get onboard to help maintain and develop LightZone?
I’m just talking out of my ear at this juncture, but the simple matter is LZ is only barely alive at this point in time.
Masahiro has done yeoman duty thus far keeping it alive, but he has a life and it’s more important than LZ. No criticism in this. We are all grateful for his efforts.
As @paperdigits says, that would be a complete rewrite. Good luck with that. The only real write-it-in-another-language option would be Kotlin, which can be used alongside Java without problems. Whether Masahiro is open to that, I have no idea.
I don’t think a change of languages (Java, Kotlin, some other JVM language like Scala) is the solution. Maybe there are fewer people who contribute, and there the language could be an issue. However, there are other projects run by single developers that thrive. Maybe Masahiro has not much time; maybe the application already does what it was envisioned to do; maybe the JVM as a platform is a limitation in some way (I’m a full-time Java dev, but purely back-end, I have no idea about UI, colour management etc. in Java).
The only way to go forward is by getting involved, I think. Java is a language that can be learnt, it’s pretty safe to program in, in a lot of ways, way easier than e.g. C. In other ways, for example the complexity of some parts of the language, the ecosystem, libraries, build tools and so on, it can be hard to learn.
This is a great discussion point. Personally the program does most everything I want it to do with a few minor concerns, some addressed on the GitHub site.
First, I like it to not crash/stop when the tool stack gets large.
Second, when in Browser, I’d love to see the Histogram, Zones, and/or Sampler, like we see when we press edit. It would save time by not having to open the Edit mode. The Info tab was added in Browser, so perhaps the others can be added.
Third, I’d like to see what edits were down to the LZN edited file without having to open it in Edit mode.
The question is, what would others like to see to improve LZ usage?
I still see the core LightZone concept as a fine combination of simple and brilliant. With well working combinations of parametric and drawn masks, multiple module instances, customisable styles and the obligatory zone system, everything going on in 16-bit linear prophoto colour space, full of testosterone.
darktable’s modules were still made out of stone and mammoth bones at that time and RawTherapee was actually a mammoth killing weapon, mentioning any kind of local editing was forbidden and ended up in a gulag.