PC Pro 2002 April

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ PC Pro 2002 April / pcpro0402.iso / essentials / graphics / Gimp / gimp-src-20001226.exe / src / gimp / NEWS < prev next >

Wrap

Text File | 2000-12-25 | 39.3 KB | 800 lines

GIMP 1.2 - Hadjaha - New features -*- text -*- The following list tries to describe all the new features that are already implemented or currently being worked on. I cannot guarantee that I describe everything correctly, since for most items I haven't read the code but only looked at the ChangeLog entry. I can however guarantee that a few things are missing... [ Changes in versions 1.1.21 to 1.1.32 ] Bug fixes We are getting ready for 1.2 ... [ Changes in version 1.1.20 ] Bug fixes Squeezing, squashing, crushing them .... [ Changes in version 1.1.19 ] Bug fixes The GIMP developers crew is working hard to fix all known bugs. If you find a bug, please check if it is still present in the latest version. Then report it using the Bug Report Form or send an email as described here. Installation dialog A new much improved installation dialogs guides you through the user-installation and asks the user to set important values like the tile_cache_size and the monitor resolution. I18n of Script-Fu Finally the UI of Script-Fu is fully internationalized. [ Changes in version 1.1.18 ] Bug fixes The GIMP developers crew is working hard to fix all known bugs. If you find a bug, please check if it is still present in the latest version. Then report it using the Bug Report Form or send an email as described here. [ Changes in version 1.1.17 ] Bug fixes The latest versions shipped with broken message catalogs that triggered a bug in gtk+-1.2.6. This bug will be fixed in the upcoming gtk+-1.2.7 and we have added a workaround to prevent GIMP from crashing. Lots of other bugs have been fixed too. LibGimp We have started to document libgimp using documentation gtk-doc. This should make it easier for plug-in developers and will help them especially to use all the new widgets and convenience functions in libgimpui which make the plug-ins look so nice. [ Changes in version 1.1.16 ] Bug fixes The GIMP developers crew is working hard to fix all known bugs. If you find a bug, please check if it is still present in the latest version. Then report it using the Bug Report Form or send an email as described here. Localisation The internationalisation of GIMP's UI is pretty much complete, which means that the strings are marked for translation. Now, those strings have to be translated of course. Check out the translation status. [ Changes in version 1.1.15 ] Arrival of the help A first set of help pages for our new online pages help system was added. If you want to help Olof and Karin with that task, contact olof@gimp.org. It is also now possible to use Netscape to read the help pages, if you don't want to (or can't) use the internal helpbrowser. Plugins overhaul Several GTK wrappers had made their way into The GIMP over the last years making live hard for developers and pushing a bad (IMHO) coding style. We are now trying to get rid of those libraries like gpc (RIP), megawidget and libgck. Most plug-ins now use helpful widgets from libgimpui, which give much nicer layout and better functionality (pressing F1 for Help works in most plug-in windows now). GAP Navigator Working with GIMP Animations is getting more comfortable with the new GAP VCR Naviagtor which provides a view on your GAP animation frames in the style of the L&C-dialog. [ Changes in version 1.1.14 ] Internationalization I18n has been improved a lot lately. The core is now fully marked for translation and the plug-ins are following. Now what we need are translators. Only very few languages are supported by now. Dialog layouts In an attempt to make the interface more unification consistent, most plug-ins saw some small changes to their dialog layout. You should soon find the default buttons at the same place in all dialogs. [ Changes in version 1.1.13 ] Not much There were some problems with the 1.1.12 release, that made it necessary to release 1.1.13 only a day later. [ Changes in version 1.1.12 ] Script-Fu bug fixed One of the most annoying bugs in the last releases was fixed. Script-Fu scripts used to crash the GIMP pretty regulary. Well, GDK refcounting can be confusing... Memleaks plugged With the help of memprof a whole bunch of memleaks were found and lots of them plugged. Layer move speedups Layer moving has been speed up by avoiding to put each and every one-pixel move onto the undo-stack. Multiple previews The File Open dialog now allows to create previews for multiple files at once. To create previews for a whole directory, simply select all files and press the Preview button. Menu Reorganization The core and plug-in menus were reorganized. The new structure might take some time to get used to, but it is more intuitive and consistent. [ Changes in version 1.1.11 ] Bug fixes The GIMP developers crew is working hard to fix all known bugs. If you find a bug, please check if it is still present in the latest version. Then report it using the Bug Report Form or send an email as described here. [ Changes in version 1.1.10 ] Intelligent Scissors Finally Intelligent Scissors work again the way they worked back in the old 0.54 days. Hooray for Austin!! Undo History the undo system was overworked and on the surface a new dialog showed up showing a history of the undoable steps performed on the image. Very nice! Export Finally The GIMP knows how to export files. Or to be exact: it provides a way for plug-ins to propagate their capabilities to the core which will take care of opening a dialog that proposes suitable conversion to the user. These conversions are then performed on a duplicate of the original image. Help System The GIMP now has a builtin help system. Pressing F1 on whatever dialog starts the helpbrowser on the related help-page. The same works on a menu-entry. Olof and Karin Kylander are already busy at writing the documentation... DnD was added to the helpbrowser so you can now drag help to Netscape if you prefer reading it there. Brush Pipe Brush Pipes are now marked in the Brush indicators Selection Dialog and the popup animates through the pipe. Bug fixes The GIMP developers crew is working hard to fix all known bugs. If you find a bug, please check that it is still present in the latest version. Then report it using the Bug Report Form or send an email as described here. [ New features in version 1.1.9 ] Enhanced pressure Using a pressure sensitive device you can now support control what is affected by the pressure. This can be opacity, brush-size and color. New Path tool A new path manipulation tool was added that is in early development stage and aims to be a replacement for the bezier tool combining bezier, spline and iscissor paths. New Airbrush tool A new airbrush is under development that promises to give you a much more natural airbrush feeling with extended input devices (graphic tablets). Resizable toolbox Got annoyed so often that those GIMP windows just don't fit to the screen the way you like them? Now you can come closer since the toolbox is resizable. Would you like a horizontal toolbox better? Navigation popup In the lower right corner of the image window you will now find a button that pops up a very handy navigation window similar to the one you can access through the menus. Indicators overhaul The small area at the bottom of the toolbox has seen a total rewrite. Now the gradient is displayed as well and all the preview code is in one generic widget that is reused in the devices status too. Lotsa new plug-ins The GIMPressionist was added to the distribution and its author directly came up with a new thing out of the Vidar-Labs: SphereDesigner. Other new plug-ins include ImageMap, GFlare, PyGimp (Python scripting support), AlienMap2, Color Enhance and Warp. Deterministic Deterministic colour dithering to arbitrary dithering palettes and deterministic alpha dithering over layers. Don't ask, it's cool! Twain Plugin for The new Twain plug-in gives you access to Win32 Twain image sources like scanners on Win32 platforms. Real-life units in This is more a call for help then a new plug-ins feature. The framework has been there for long, but still most plug-ins ignore real-life units. I have changed the Grid plug-in to make use of the nice widgets that libgimp offers to handle all the unit stuff. The code is heavily commented to make it more easy to copy from it. So if you read this and are a plugin author or you fell you could help anyway, go hack those plug-ins! If you need help, drop me a line. JPEG saving with Not only offers the new JPEG plug-in much Preview more control over the saving parameters, it also shows you what the result will look like. More Drag'n'Drop Support for Dnd is coming along. You can now drag layers from the Layers'n'Channels-dialog to the toolbox to create a new image with only that layer. Or drop the layer on an image to add it to the images layerstack. Also Color DnD is now supported almost everywhere and you can drag brushes and patterns around in the device status dialog. Image Pipe Pixmap brushes were just recently added, but it doesn't end there. Now there's an image pipe. This is a brush that draws with a pixmap out of a list of pixmaps. The pixmap is either choosen randomly or based on cursor direction, pressure or tilt. You'll love it! New measure tool A new tool that allows to measure arbitray distances and angles in an image was added. See a (dumb) screenshot here. Image navigation The new navigation window helps you to navigate through large images. Have a look at it here. Scaled brush The brush selector now scales the brushes so previews that they fit into the preview area. Click here for a screenshot. Pixmap brushes Pixmap brushes are being added. This will allow you to paint with small colored images. New Win32 plugin A new plug-in allows you to copy and paste between different Windoze applications and The GIMP using the clipboard. [ New features in version 1.1.8 ] Better cubic The algorithms for the cubic interpolation interpolation for transformation were replaced by faster/ better ones. Wheel mouse support Wheel mice are now supported in a variety of Gimp dialogs. New Plugins Sample Colorize and Curve Bend were added to the distribution. Additionally two new plug-ins for the Win32 port were added that allow to print and to take screenshots on Win platforms. [ New features in version 1.1.7 ] Selection to Path A new plug-in allows you to convert a selection into an editable bezierpath. Drag'n'Drop You can now drop a file (out of GMC for example) onto the toolbox and The GIMP will try to load it. This also works with URLs (that you can drag out of netscape). QuickMask Finally we have QuickMask in The GIMP. IMHO the UI still needs a little tweak, but it works perfectly as you can see here. Paste As New You can know directly paste the content of the buffer into a new image. Saves a few mouse-clicks. Win32 portability It is now possible to build a fully functioning GIMP on Win32 with free tools only. IFS Compose saves One day you did that wonderful tree with IFS and loads Compose and since then you've never ever managed to get those parameters right again? Now IFS Compose can save and load his settings. New tools Finally the empty holes in the toolbox got filled and we have Dodge and Burn and Smudge tools. Help Browser Work has started on a Help System for The GIMP and the helpbrowser is already done! Now Karin and Olof (authors of The GUM) can start to work on the documentation. Image preview cache Thumbnail previews of an image are now handled in a central place, so that small previews can be computed from larger ones in the cache. Right now this is used in the image-menu (e.g. in the L&C-Dialog), more will follow. Tear-off menus The rumours have come true and while the concept of an active image evolves, tear-off menus sprang to life. [ New features in version 1.1.6 ] Active image concept Preliminary code to add an active image concept has been added. So far the first cool thing you get from this is that the Layers-n-Channels-dialog automagically tracks the image you're currently working on. Interesting things will happen here. Tear-off menus are rumoured to appear soon... Indicator area The toolbox has been extended to show the current brush and pattern you are using giving direct access to the related dialogs. This will soon be extended to also show you the current gradient. Bug fixes Bug fixes, bug fixes, bug fixes all over the place. Hopefully not too much new ones were added... Colored Curves Color in the previously greyscale bars to the dialog left and below the curve itself. This still needs to be done for the Levels dialog too. New File-New dialog Yep, another change to the dialog. Hopefully everyone is content with the layout/ functionality this time. Line draw preview You do know that you can draw a straight line using the Shift key with the paint tools, don't you? Now you can even position this line precisely using the new line-preview. Unfortunately this is quite buggy right now and absolutely needs to be redone (and I can say this as I've implemented this feature...). UPDATE: This should work now. Tile Row Hinting The image compositing has been speed up by implementing hints to the tile structure. That way the render-engine knows for example if a row is totally transparent and can skip the calculation. Waterselect The waterselect plug-in has been integrated color-selector as a pluggable color-selector module. Context cursors Work has begun on giving better user feedback through context cursors. For example the selection tools now indicate whether you are adding or subtracting the selection by adding a small plus or minus sign to the cursor. [ New features in version 1.1.5 ] New Scale/Resize UI The Scale and Resize dialogs have been overworked and it is now possible to change the image resolution interactively. OS/2 portability Lots of changes to make this version of The Gimp compile on OS/2. This is still a work in progress as is the Win32 portability. Tool toggles Tools behaviuor for tools like Flip, Crop, Convolve can be easily toggled on the fly using the Shift key. Opaque layer moves Layer are moved opaque now. That is you don't only see the dashed outline move but the whole content. Helps a lot when positioning layers. Per tool paint This is toggleable in the Preferences and options adds the paintbrush options like Opacity to every tool so you can have different settings for different tools. Sample average The color-picker can now optionally average color-picker the neighborhood of pixels instead only giving you the pixel you click at. Speedups The color-correction functions as well as the histogram functions have been optimized and make use of multi-processor machines. Global parasites Global parasites (arbitrary data attached to the Gimp process) have been there for longer, but now they are saved and can be retrieved through the PDB. Tool options The layout of all tools has changed slightly. redesign They look more uniform, have a nice Reset-button and inactive widgets are greyed about giving better user feedback. Crop tool overhaul The former crop tool is now called Crop & Resize and allows you to interactively resize layers or the image. Autocrop functionality has also been added. Interactive Curves Curves dialog now has interactive feedback. Press and drag the mouse button in the image window and a marker will appear in the curves dialog showing the channel value at that point. New plug-ins New plug-ins were added: Rotate ColorMap allows you to shift ranges of colors to new values much like the way you know it from XV. GDynText has been added and integrated as an optional replacement for the text tool. It allows you to add editable text layers. Oh, it really rocks!! PDBgen integration The PDB (Procedural Database) calls for the gimp functions that allow you to call gimp internals from scripts and plug-ins are now autogenerated using some Perl-magic. More work on unit Support for real-world units is coming along support and is now supported by the gimp core in most of the places where it makes sense. [ New features in version 1.1.4 ] New plug-ins Three new plug-ins were added to the distribution: The wmf plug-in loads files of the Windows(tm) metafile file format. GAP, the Gimp Animation Plug-in, gives access to a bunch of functions for working on and creation of animations. The xjt plug-in combines the functionality of the XCF file format with JPEG compression. Gradient The paintbrush can now be configured to use brush-strokes the current gradient as its color-source. This allows for some very nice effects. A not-so-nice one can be seen here. User-defined units The framework for user-defined units has been added. If you like to measure your images in lightyears, you can now do so and the unit definition will be saved with your work in the XCF file. Power-user shortcuts Modifier keys (Shift|Ctrl|Alt) can now be used with the buttons in the L&C-dialog and give quick access to functions like Move Layer to Top and others. Additionally a button for Channel To Selection has been added. XCF loading/saving XCF files do not only load and save much speedups faster, they also compress a little better then before. However full backward compatibilty is preserved. More preferences The preferences dialog is seeing a major cosmetic overhaul. There's a new widget to select directories and recently the dialog has been reordered to use a tree instead of notebook tabs. Plug-in updates A bunch of plug-ins including but not limited to wind, bumpmap, exchange, sharpen and mail have seen bugfixes and/or enhancements. [ New features in version 1.1.3 ] Paths dialog The Layers&Channels-dialog now features a new page: Paths. This allows you to conveniently add and remove points from your bezier paths and to save, delete and modify paths. Additionally it is an easy way to crash your Gimp. Real-world unit The integration of real-world units into The support Gimp is going on nicely. The basics are there: You can choose your favorite unit/ resolution in the Preferences, use it when creating a new image and the information is displayed in the statusbar. Better RGB->Indexed The box-cut quantizer used in RGB->INDEXED conversion conversion has been revised and should give better results now. Win32 merges Tor Lillqvist started to merge his changes for Win32 into The Gimp source. For more info have a look at the GIMP Win32 page. Configurable image The string that is displayed in the image title title is now configurable. It can for example show the display zoom factor. Perl A lot of work has been put into the Perl plugin recently, but as long as I haven't managed to build it on my system, I can't say anything about this... [ New features in version 1.1.2 ] New plugin: This new plugin allows you to browse the Plugindetails plugin menu system and helps to find the plug-in you've lost in the menu jungle weeks ago. See it in action here. Thumbnails Gimp now automagically saves xv-compatible thumbnails upon image saves. And of course, the load dialog shows them. More fun with Ink The Ink-tool now allows the user to choose between elliptical, square, and diamond shaped brushes. Parallelization In addition to all the work that's been put into threads, true parallelization is now being added. Choose your number of processors and make The Gimp fly... Triangular Due to the ease of adding new color-selectors Color-Selector via modules, a nice new triangular one has appeared. Have a look at this screenshot. [ New features in version 1.1.1 ] File->Revert A function that reverts your image to the version on disk was added. Pluggable There's now the possibility to add Color-Selectors color-selector modules to the Gimp. Next to the standard rectangular one you'll now find the circle that is used for Script-Fu. More speed, less Optimizations using copy-on-write were memory applied to more internal functions to bring you a faster, less memory-consuming Gimp. Improved JPEG The JPEG plugin now handles comments, handling resolution and progressive saving. Progress indicators Most if not all timeintensive core-functions now change the cursor to indicate that gimp is busy and show their progress in the statusbar. Tab hides dialogs Ever wished to get rid of all the dialogs floating around on your screen? Well, with the new version, you press the TAB-key and they go away ... and can be brought back using the TAB-key again. Gimp class generator Well, I'm not sure if I got this right, so here's what Yosh said about it: "[GCG] is autogening that gtk+ class drugdery". Should make coding easier. Spiral gradients A new gradient type was introduced: spiral gradients. Have a look at this small sample. Palette dialog The palette dialog has seen an overhaul. Things haven't settled yet, but the new dialog looks much nicer and, unlike the old one, can handle large amounts of palettes. [ New features in version 1.1.0 ] XInput support GIMP now supports special input devices like drawing tablets by default. It depends on the device being supported by your XServer. For example, Wacom drawing tablets are often supported. Support for multiple devices, pressure and tilt sensitivity is slowly being added to all paint tools. Ink tool A nice new toy that really comes to life if you have an extended input device as described above. Have a look at this screenshot. 'File New' dialog The New Image dialog allows the use of real life units like centimeters and inches along with a resolution entry. Have a look at this screenshot. Hex display A small but nifty feature was added to the Color Picker: It now displays the HEX triplet of the selected color. Useful for WEB artists. Popup button The small rectangle between the rulers in the upper left corner of the image window now gives access to the menu. Usefule for people with tablets or two-button mice. Statusbar The image display now has a statusbar. Plug-ins write their progress there and your mouse coordinates are also displayed. Most tools use it too. The Selection tool, for example, shows the selection size while you drag. Have a look at this screenshot. And don't worry, it's possible to hide the statusbar to save screen estate. GUI enhancements Lots of nifty enhancements to the user interface. Spinbuttons are used in a lot of places. More stuff like that has to be added in the future... Session management GIMP remembers window positions and sizes (eeek, not working currently, but its almost there) and restores them on startup. Selections New algorithms are now used to grow and shrink the selection. The result looks much better! PDB interface A lot more internal functions are now exported to the PDB. For example, this should allow the GIMP Animation Plugin to work without changes to the GIMP core. Better tile-caching Tiles are now more intelligently cached and a threaded process tries to swap out dirty tiles before you run out of physical memory. (Hmm, have I got this right? IIRC, there's a thread to swap in stuff ahead of the time, too.) Copy On Write The MAD-COW patches that appeared too late to get integrated into GIMP-1.0 are now integrated. And...its FASTER!! Document Index The document index keeps track of the images you used with The GIMP. You can even drag in an image from a file-manager (GNOME MC for example). Editable Brushes Well, editable brushes still need some work, but the basics are there... Fixed size The size or the aspect ratio of selections selections can now be entered numerically as well. Script-Fu interface The Script-Fu dialog now allows a whole bunch improvements of entry widgets, like selectors for fonts, brushes, gradients and patterns. Strings can be entered without the nasty quotes and numerical entries can use sliders and spinbuttons. Have a look at this screenshot. Most of the scripts were already updated. Quick Reference The Quick Reference sheet looks much better and holds more information. A must-have for your desktop. Transform Tool UI The user interface for the Transform tool has seen a major overhaul. It now offers a new 'Corrective' mode that for example makes it easy to correct slightly rotated scans. Have a look at this screenshot. Color representation GIMP now uses GdkRGB to provide better dithering for non truecolor displays. This should also speed GIMP up a bit. Parasites Arbitrary data can be attached to an image and be retrieved later. (Is this already saved in the XCF file? I think not...) Tatoos A unique stamp can be attached to drawables. That way a plug-in can easily keep track of layers. Dialogs A few dialogs can now be controlled via the PDB. That allows a plug-in to use the internal dialogs to select brushes, patterns and gradients. Idle-Renderer Display re-rendering is now handled in an interruptible asynchronous thread. This makes The GIMP more responsive, especially when working with the Layers-dialog. Resolution support Each image now has a resolution associated with it. This needs to be integrated better into the GUI, but there are already a few file plug-ins that make use of this. GimpPerl The GIMP-Perl extension is now part of GIMP-1.1. Monitor resolution The image can now be displayed in float scale factrors. If GIMP knows about your monitor resolution it displays one inch as one inch. Still needs some work... Help in the DB The DB Browser now also display the help that Browser is available for a lot of functions in the PDB. Internationalization National Language Support is coming! New plug-ins Various new plug-ins were added. More have appeared in the Registry and wait to be added or updated. A few nice ones that are now included: * WaterSelect - a nifty way to select colors * NewsPrint - whee, you have to see that * Guillotine - slices the image up along its guides Internals Lots of changes were made to GIMP internals that I don't understand correctly, like objectification and removal of the image ID system. Read the ChangeLog yourself to figure this out. GTK+ compatibilty GIMP 1.1 makes use of the development version of GTK+. Therefore a whole lot of work has been put in following the GTK+ development and keeping The GIMP in sync. Plug-ins and Scripts Various plug-ins and scripts not mentioned above have been updated or fixed to work with changes in the GIMP core or GTK+. One day I might add a list of all changed plug-ins to this list... Miscellaneous * The painting functions (brush, pencil, airbrush, etc.) have been optimized. * The GAP plugin, which has some essential animation features, is being integrated into GIMP. * The font selector has been redesigned. * The new, slightly incomplete MAINTAINERS file should help track responsibility and expertise for various parts of The GIMP. Copyright 1998-2000 by Sven Neumann <sven@gimp.org>