Post by @lina@vt.social

Hoshino Lina (星乃リナ) 🩵 3D Yuri Wedding 2026!!!

Update on copy/paste being broken on GIMP/Inkscape on macOS (and as it turns out, TIFF loading is also broken on Windows): They won't fix it, because their image loader is legacy on macOS and Windows, but also there are no plans to bring the non-legacy image loader to those platforms.

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/work_items/6569#note_2853567

I guess GTK is now deprecated and unmaintained on anything that isn't Linux, and with it every app that uses GTK.

Edit: Looks like the person who made those comments hadn't gotten the right message and that is not the plan. Still, 5+ years with broken image pasting on macOS, an untriaged issue, lack of awareness of what the plan is... I don't think non-Linux platform support is being taken very seriously here...

18 Replies

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curtmack

@curtmack@floss.social 3 hr. ago

@lina I've also been thinking about this sort of thing. It's only going to get harder to find skilled open source developers willing to subject themselves to Windows if Microsoft keeps enshittifying.

It's a shame, because having open-source software like GIMP, Inkscape, and Emacs available on Windows was a big part of why I was willing to try Linux back in the day. They're valuable advocacy.

Arjan

@amolenaar@fosstodon.org 41 min. ago

@curtmack @lina Multiplatform support for GTK is not something that happens magically. It needs work. That’s why I started helping out years ago. I couldn’t sit on the side and complain. It’s all open source: fix it!

Hoshino Lina (星乃リナ) 🩵 3D Yuri Wedding 2026!!!

@lina@vt.social 38 min. ago

@amolenaar @curtmack This isn't a multiplatform bug. It's something that has been broken on Linux for half a decade too, it just got accidentally fixed in new code (that is currently Linux only) and meanwhile it happens to be much more visible on macOS since that platform uses TIFF for clipboard image interchange.

But really the issue is I filed a well documented bug about it, it got instantly duped to a 5 year old bug (I hadn't been able to find), and then after I volunteered my time to chase down the bug a bit and make progress in triaging it and tracking it down, I basically got told "GTK upstream won't take responsibility for this bug" and that's just all kinds of wrong. "We don't have anyone to work on this" is different from "we refuse to work on this", if you end up at #2 (even through a misunderstanding) something really went awry along the way.

Dev Albino :elixir: :python:

@v_raton@bolha.us 8 hr. ago

@lina but they saying they are bring glycin for both plaatforms and unified the hole thing

Glycin is planned to be made buildable and functional on macOS and Windows, it just that the glycin loaders will be unified to the library itself and without sandboxing.

Hoshino Lina (星乃リナ) 🩵 3D Yuri Wedding 2026!!!

@lina@vt.social 7 hr. ago

@v_raton Posted by a follower after I made my fedi post ^^

June

@june@social.nekover.se 8 hr. ago

@lina From all I saw bringing the new image loader (glycin) to macOS and Windows seems to be in the works. In her latest blog post the glycin dev explicitly talked about bringing support to these platforms: https://blogs.gnome.org/sophieh/2026/08/07/gnome-fellowship-july-2026/

Hoshino Lina (星乃リナ) 🩵 3D Yuri Wedding 2026!!!

@lina@vt.social 8 hr. ago

@june That's good to hear.

Still though, pasting images being broken on macOS for half a decade, and the issue not even being triaged properly, and being told incorrect information when I try to help...

Felix Häcker

@haeckerfelix@mastodon.social 8 hr. ago

@lina

> but also there are no plans to bring the non-legacy image loader to those platforms.

That is not true, the next upcoming v2.2 release of Glycin (= the non-legacy image loader) already includes the necessary changes to support both macOS and Windows as well.

My GNOME app uses Glycin, and it runs finely on those platforms.

Screenshot of "Shortwave", running on macOS, using Glycin to load radio station thumbnails.

Hoshino Lina (星乃リナ) 🩵 3D Yuri Wedding 2026!!!

@lina@vt.social 8 hr. ago

@haeckerfelix Sounds like not everyone got the memo then...

Botch Frivarg

@deetwenty@todon.nl 9 hr. ago

@lina even as a Linux users try to steer away from GTK apps where possible due to many of them not integrating well if you don't use Gnome, and doesn't look like that will change anytime soon

tytan652

@tytan652@framapiaf.org 9 hr. ago

@lina

I think not everybody is up to date planned around Glycin roadmap.

Edit: macOS and Windows support is planned

Hoshino Lina (星乃リナ) 🩵 3D Yuri Wedding 2026!!!

@lina@vt.social 9 hr. ago

@tytan652 Ngl I feel like every single time I've tried to get any GNOME/GTK bug reported/fixed it's been a struggle to get anyone to care.

Hoshino Lina (星乃リナ) 🩵 3D Yuri Wedding 2026!!!

@lina@vt.social 9 hr. ago

@inkscape Are you aware of this position? Copy/pasting images is broken on macOS for many years, and GTK's upstream policy is apparently that they don't support it.

This isn't the first time GTK has caused issues on non-Linux platforms (Inkscape used to be unusably slow on macOS just a couple years ago)... perhaps it's time to consider migrating to a different toolkit that officially supports Windows/macOS?

Edit: Looks like glycin *is* coming to Windows/macOS after all... but honestly, half a decade with image paste broken on macOS isn't a good look either way...

Luna

@Luna@neopaquita.es 9 hr. ago

@lina Don't they still use GTK2 though?

Christian Hergert

@chergert@my.devsuite.app 8 hr. ago

@Luna @lina

It's GTK 3 now. But for what it's worth, I wrote an entirely new GDK backend for GTK 4 for macOS which has a new Copy/Paste implementation that should work much better.

Additionally, it can do all the drawing with GL, handle colorspaces better, and is just, in general, much better/faster.

So the real issue here is just that GIMP is not yet on GTK 4.

Martin Owens :inkscape:

@doctormo@floss.social 3 hr. ago

@chergert @Luna @lina

We have moved to Gtk4 for Inkscape 1.5 which fixes a fair few things. But I've also just added Glycin support into the CMYK/Color refactoring branch so if that helps un pick tiff support as well I will be most happy about that.

I do know that we are unaware of any copy paste problem in Inkscape on macOS. Usually these kinds of bugs end up being criticals and the project hires people to fix them.

We're also keen to help Gtk with its multi-platform support, where possible

1 more reply

Hoshino Lina (星乃リナ) 🩵 3D Yuri Wedding 2026!!!

@lina@vt.social 9 hr. ago

@Luna No, it's GTK3 with the GTK4 migration ongoing.

https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inkscape/-/work_items/4802

The one fairly popular app that I know of which was stuck on GTK2 was Ardour. These days they have forked it into an internal vendored version called ydk (so they can maintain it).

GitLab

Gtk4 Migration Issues Table (#4802) · Issues · Inkscape / inkscape · GitLab

A list of issues created by the GTK4 migration. A work in progress. Please add your issues. Don't hesitate to uncheck an item if problems...

Sun Microdevil Pte Ltd

@koakuma@uwu.social 9 hr. ago

@lina It has long since became a GNOME Tool Kit anyway, no?