GIMP Working in Mac OS X Leopard
Tuesday, 6. November 2007, 23:53:25
With Mac OS X Leopard came a lot of new changes. One of the changes was to the Unix core of OS X. Leopard is the first Mac OS to receive a full on Unix certification, and in order to do that Apple had to change a lot of the ways that Unix interacted with the OS. One of these was to X11 (Apple’s implementation of the x windowing system).
Many program ports rely on X11 to function, and due to the change in the way X11 works, those applications no longer work in Leopard, or if they do work they’re probably not usable.
One of these applications happens to be GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program), my application of choice when it comes to editing photos. There’s a work around that can get the GIMP 2.4 RC3 version to at least load, but once you try and do anything inside the program, it crashes.
So, I was stumped and resorted to using the far less versatile program, Seashore (which is a watered down version of GIMP programmed for the Aqua interface).
That is... until I remembered a nifty little attempt to render from source a GIMP version that doesn’t rely on X11. That’s right, an Aqua version of GIMP that includes all of the nicks and crannies from the real GIMP 2.4 build RC3. I knew that GIMP wouldn’t work in Leopard was because of X11 being changed, so I was pretty certain that this version would work. Was I right? Yep. It works, but it isn’t nearly as good as one would hope. Granted you can do everything that the X11 GIMP could do, the Aqua version is plagued with various bugs.
Now these bugs don’t crash GIMP or anything, they’re just pretty annoying to deal with. So here are the bugs and annoyances that I have found:
-I cannot get any themes to work in GIMP, and the the Tango theme inside of the normal X11 installation is gone. You are, instead, left with a default theme that looks like Windows in classic mode (ewww).
-The dock icon, once you have GIMP open, is rendered useless. If you right click it the menu will take a few seconds to load and won’t show “Quit” at the bottom, but instead “Force Quit,” which doesn’t quit GIMP. You must manually quit GIMP from the menu. Also, “Hide” doesn’t work.
-OS X doesn’t recognize GIMP as being a valid source to open image files with, so you can’t drag images onto the dock icon to open them in GIMP. You must manually go to the GIMP menu and click “Open.” Then browse to the file. There may be a way to get OS X to recognize GIMP as a way to read image files, but I haven’t found one.
-Dragging layers in the layer window panel doesn’t move them. Nope, it duplicates them and then hides the original. Granted it does duplicate the layer to where you were trying to move it, it’s pretty annoying and slows down GIMP.
-When loading GIMP the load screen may seemingly freeze. If this happens simply click it a few times (anywhere will do) and it will finish opening.
-Sometimes popup dialogues (like the perspective dialogue) will randomly go to the bottom of the screen when using the tool associated with it. You’ll have to drag the window up to be able to click “Okay” or “Cancel.”
-You cannot rename the app from “AquaGIMP” to something else (like “Gimp”) for some odd reason.
-If you're trying to manually enter pixel values and the like, the number "1" seems to need to be held for a second before GIMP recognizes it. I don't know why.
So, as you can see, these are really annoying bugs or just general annoyances that I have found. So, let’s hope that the X11 version of GIMP is fixed soon.
If you would like to download this version of GIMP, click here. (From www.nasendackel.de)
Well, that about finishes this blog, so check back with me tomorrow for another Apple-related article.
--DMXell
If you liked this post please consider subscribing to the RSS feed or, if you use the Opera web browser, using the widget button located in the address bar to make a widget out of this blog.
UPDATE: I forgot to mention, the Aqua version of GIMP only works on the Intel processor and I believe you also need at least version 10.4.10 (correct me if I'm wrong).
Like this blog post? Digg it!
Many program ports rely on X11 to function, and due to the change in the way X11 works, those applications no longer work in Leopard, or if they do work they’re probably not usable.
One of these applications happens to be GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program), my application of choice when it comes to editing photos. There’s a work around that can get the GIMP 2.4 RC3 version to at least load, but once you try and do anything inside the program, it crashes.So, I was stumped and resorted to using the far less versatile program, Seashore (which is a watered down version of GIMP programmed for the Aqua interface).
That is... until I remembered a nifty little attempt to render from source a GIMP version that doesn’t rely on X11. That’s right, an Aqua version of GIMP that includes all of the nicks and crannies from the real GIMP 2.4 build RC3. I knew that GIMP wouldn’t work in Leopard was because of X11 being changed, so I was pretty certain that this version would work. Was I right? Yep. It works, but it isn’t nearly as good as one would hope. Granted you can do everything that the X11 GIMP could do, the Aqua version is plagued with various bugs.
Now these bugs don’t crash GIMP or anything, they’re just pretty annoying to deal with. So here are the bugs and annoyances that I have found:
-I cannot get any themes to work in GIMP, and the the Tango theme inside of the normal X11 installation is gone. You are, instead, left with a default theme that looks like Windows in classic mode (ewww).
-The dock icon, once you have GIMP open, is rendered useless. If you right click it the menu will take a few seconds to load and won’t show “Quit” at the bottom, but instead “Force Quit,” which doesn’t quit GIMP. You must manually quit GIMP from the menu. Also, “Hide” doesn’t work.
-OS X doesn’t recognize GIMP as being a valid source to open image files with, so you can’t drag images onto the dock icon to open them in GIMP. You must manually go to the GIMP menu and click “Open.” Then browse to the file. There may be a way to get OS X to recognize GIMP as a way to read image files, but I haven’t found one.
-Dragging layers in the layer window panel doesn’t move them. Nope, it duplicates them and then hides the original. Granted it does duplicate the layer to where you were trying to move it, it’s pretty annoying and slows down GIMP.
-When loading GIMP the load screen may seemingly freeze. If this happens simply click it a few times (anywhere will do) and it will finish opening.
-Sometimes popup dialogues (like the perspective dialogue) will randomly go to the bottom of the screen when using the tool associated with it. You’ll have to drag the window up to be able to click “Okay” or “Cancel.”
-You cannot rename the app from “AquaGIMP” to something else (like “Gimp”) for some odd reason.
-If you're trying to manually enter pixel values and the like, the number "1" seems to need to be held for a second before GIMP recognizes it. I don't know why.
So, as you can see, these are really annoying bugs or just general annoyances that I have found. So, let’s hope that the X11 version of GIMP is fixed soon.
If you would like to download this version of GIMP, click here. (From www.nasendackel.de)
Well, that about finishes this blog, so check back with me tomorrow for another Apple-related article.
--DMXell
If you liked this post please consider subscribing to the RSS feed or, if you use the Opera web browser, using the widget button located in the address bar to make a widget out of this blog.
UPDATE: I forgot to mention, the Aqua version of GIMP only works on the Intel processor and I believe you also need at least version 10.4.10 (correct me if I'm wrong).
Like this blog post? Digg it!
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JayPand # 7. November 2007, 08:07
Greetings from Down Under,
Thanks for GIMP for Leopard!, finally I got working version. Keep up the good work Mate
Regards
JayPand
DMXell # 7. November 2007, 08:13