Hey there I posted this to the forum I will post it here , I hope you dont 
mind. 


As a start I would like to say this thread is solely targeting the mypaint 
developers and NOT users. So if you are a user IGNORE THIS.

Hey
 there. Its all started when I tried to use GIMP, I got a macbook air 
and a imac and in neither computer gimp could  recognize my pen tablet. 
Suffice to say I am no big fan of X11 of macos, and gimps gui looked 
very ugly. I am also a huge fan of python and love to code, so I thought
 to start a project mainly targeting macos that will only have a tiny 
fraction of gimp features. I am a 2d artist , though only a noob, I only
 use the paint brush and zero custom brushes, and I know that this the 
way most pro artists work too, so I did not want all the flashy features
 of gimp. So I was preparing to start a project with python and pygame 
that will have only a few features but could recognise my tablet and 
really do those very few features very well in a very polished graphical
 interface. I decided to call this project with the very cheesy name 
"DragonPaint" since I love dragons and cheesy names. 

However I 
decided to temporary drop the idea because I have managed recently after
 upgrading to Lion and getting a new wacom intuos 4m to make gimp see my
 tablet. I intended to just write python scripts for gimp.

In the
 mean time in #pygame channel one guy mentioned that mypaint uses python
 but I did not take him too seriously since in most cases python is used
 only for addons and script, the main programm is made in C and I hate C
 and compiling even though I know C , at least the basics. 

I was
 not new in mypaint , I knew about it since the very first versions but I
 only care about macos so I never actually used it. Imagine my suprise 
when I found out that a huge part of mypaint is written in python. I was
 actually suprised to find even a Lion download that unfortunately did 
not work for me. 

So now my dilemma is two fold, from one hand I 
could contribute towards a macos port of mypaint to Lion, on the other 
hand I could base my DragonPaint project on mypaint and make it a fork 
of mypaint (for those not familiar form is the technical term of 
"stealing" code from a open source , of course respecting the license 
and giving credit to original authors). My problem is that I really hate
 X11 on macos, and something tells me I am not the only macos user to do
 so. Because this started as a linux project I completely understand the
 choice of GTK but on macos is meeeehhhhh. But then again GTK3 offers 
native support and look in macos and looks lovely . But mypaint is for 
GTK2 and also pygtk is only for GTK2. There is pyGobject but I fear that
 this will mean a rewrite for the GUI of mypaint. And of course I still 
like the idea of a fork that follow closely any developement in mypaint 
even contributes new features in mypaint that are implemented to 
DragonSphere but is not bound by the goal of mypaint to become the 
ultimate Natural medium emulation app (see Painter competitor).

To
 be sincere I am abit lost here, because I see a huge potential in any 
case and I would love to contribute on mypaint even if I decide to go 
down Dragonsphere route. DragonSphere for me will mean a complete 
rewrite of the GUI of mypaint (even partially) using pyobjc that make 
native 100% macos applications (that means that the app will become mac 
only but I dont worry about this since I cant support any other os 
anyway) and also that means that will open the way to porting 
DragonSphere (and mypaint in a way cause I intend to respect mypaint 
features and gui) to iOS. Especially the iPad which I also own. Apple 
has allowed for pyobjc applications to exist in ios app store in case 
you are wondering , few months ago.  

I really need your advice 
as I am abit lost.  I know a rewrite wont be easy , it will not be fast,
 but I love developing guis so I dont mind. I also dont mind droping the
 DragonSphere idea and only contribute to mypaint macos port.  Any 
developer who have an advice on this ?

I am already looking through the source code and trying to make sense.  


In case you may think that I am just a kid with big ambitious here is a 
sample of my work on python. I am no expert but at least I try to improve ;) 


Gyes is an addon I made for 3d application 
blender that generates random materials and textures (you can even use 
the random texures with mypaint), the randomisation can be controlled 
very precisely by the user. You can find the wiki of the addon here , 
that contains the download link and all the info. Gyes is a completed 
project.

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.5/Py/Scripts/System/Gyes

I
 am also making a very small book on python for those who want to learn 
the bare basic of python very fast. It was intended for blender users 
but It can be read by anyone. 

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Kilon/Python_book_of_magic

Another project of mine is a MIDI app made with pygame called Vriareon. Its a 
WIP low priority project.

http://pygame.org/project-Vriareon-1745-.html
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