62 lines
2.8 KiB
Plaintext
62 lines
2.8 KiB
Plaintext
Notes regarding GFig
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Bill Skaggs, July 3, 2004
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Most importantly: this version of Gfig has been massively revised. It
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is very unstable. It is likely to crash at any moment. It is full of
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bugs. Many things are incompletely implemented, and others do not
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work yet. Play with it at your own risk.
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(If it does crash, though, it is not likely to corrupt the image, so
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in most cases you should be able to Exit the plug-in and continue
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working.)
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A quick summary of recent changes:
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Gfig now works somewhat like the text tool. It uses special dedicated
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"Gfig" layers. A Gfig layer is defined by the presence of a parasite
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called "Gfig", which contains a representation of the figure. (It is
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actually a Gfig file whose contents are attached to the layer as a
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parasite.)
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If Gfig is run when the active layer is a Gfig layer, then it loads
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the figure that is stored there, so that it can be modified. If the
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active layer is not a Gfig layer, then a new layer is created, and
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initialized to transparent.
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The figure that you create is saved to the layer when you hit the
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Close button. If you hit the Cancel button, the results of your work
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are not saved. The GFig data parasite is not overwritten until you
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hit Close, so you can always revert to the previous version of the
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figure by hitting Cancel and then re-running GFig.
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Each object that you create in Gfig can have its own style. Currently
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the only style attributes that work are foreground color and brush
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shape; others will be added shortly.
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When you start Gfig, and the dialog comes up, the background of the
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preview shows a representation of the image you are working on. Each
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time you do something in GFig, the result is reflected by a change in
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both the Pika image and the GFig preview, so you can see in real time
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the results of everything that you do. (The rendering could stand to
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be speeded up, though.) You can turn the background display in the
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preview on or off by toggling Edit->Options->Show image.
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PLEASE NOTE: The Gfig file format has not yet stabilized. Until it
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does, the parasite used to store the layer data is marked
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non-persistent, meaning it will not be stored in XCF files. This will
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be trivial to change when the time comes. The ordinary pixel data
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*is* stored in XCF files, though. This means that if you save the
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image as XCF and re-open it, the GFig layers will be there but you
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will not be able to use GFig to modify them.
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ALSO NOTE: When GFig loads a GFig layer, it begins by clearing the
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layer to transparent and redrawing it as stored in the GFig parasite.
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This means that any changes you have made in the layer in the meantime
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will be lost. It would be nice if GFig could give a warning that this
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is about to happen, but it is difficult to implement, because Gimp
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does not yet provide an easy way to tell whether a layer has been
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modified (as far as I know).
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