PIKApp/NEWS

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------------------------------
GNU Image Manipulation Program
Development Branch
------------------------------
This is the unstable branch of GIMP.
Overview of Changes from GIMP 2.99.16 to GIMP 2.99.18
=====================================================
Core:
- New snapping options:
* "Snap to Bounding Boxes": allows on-canvas snapping to either layer
borders or center.
* "Snap to Equidistance": allows to snap a layer to be at the same distance
from a second one that this second one is to a third one, either
horizontally or vertically.
- GIMP is now able to use fonts with custom styles, which Pango is unable to
work with.
- Font names are not unique anymore, which means that GIMP doesn't rename
identically named fonts with #1 or #2, etc. as it used to do. These fonts
with same name are now properly working despite the name clash.
- GimpData now have a concept of collection, which is either a controlled name
for internal data, or a string constructed from the local file path for
external data. This will be used to serialize data objects hence easily
retrieve the proper data even when some data may have duplicate names.
- New "FG to Transparent (Hardedge)" gradient.
- New Adobe Swatch Exchange palette import support.
Graphical User Interface:
- "Merge menu and title bar" option is not shown on macOS as it is not usable
there (the main menu is anyway out of the window from the start).
- Top menu has been special-cased for macOS (some items are removed with
"hidden-when" attribute set to "macos-menubar" value) for items which are
also available in the application menu.
- Menu section can now be named with the "section-name" attribute in
GtkBuilder ".ui" files. This can be used as a replacement of the former
"Placeholder" concept which we used to have (and has now been completely
removed).
Plug-ins or GEGL operations which want to make use of sections can use the
"[Section]" syntax. For instance installing a plug-in in the menu path
"<Image>/File/[Open]" will install the menu item at the end of the Open
section (i.e. after the various other open-file actions at the top of the
File menu).
- Some string or naming consistencies were fixed in source strings.
- GimpContainerEntry don't have inline completion anymore. Instead the result
pop-up always appear, even for one result. This is because a limitation of
GtkEntryCompletion: we cannot remove the case sensitivity search (see
gtk#275) which was very bad usage experience because when we reached a
single result, suddenly nothing happened anymore (no popup, no completion)
if case was different on any letter. It's just better to always have popup
with case insensitivity.
This widget is used for instance for on-canvas font selection.
- Some icons were modified with an added light border to make them better
visible on dark themes: gimp-tool-text icons in Color and Legacy icon themes
and gimp-tool-dodge in Color theme.
- Help menu rearranged to be better organized and also to move "About GIMP" as
the last item, which is its more conventional position.
Tools:
- Text tool:
* improve markup creation logic when replacing selected text in
order not to create useless styling markup interfering with other
features.
* Alignment for RTL languages is now more consistent with how it works in
other software (such as LibreOffice or Scribus).
Plug-ins:
- Farbfeld: new image format import/export support.
- OpenEXR:
* Files with single channels are always treated as grayscale, even when
they use non-conventional channel names. A notice message is also
presented to the user in a dialog for information.
- Metadata Editor:
* Various code cleanups and improvements;
* GUI improvements;
* Xmp.plus.ImageSupplierName can now only have one value;
* Improved Creation date handling;
* Synchronization (both for reading and writing) added between some Exif,
Xmp and Iptc equivalent tags. On reading, when equivalent tags have
different values at load, a terminal warning is now outputted.
- Script-fu:
* Generated dialog's titles are not prefixed with "Script-Fu: " anymore.
* Several scripts were removed and moved to gimp-data-extras: erase-rows,
grid-system, select-to-brush, select-to-image, select-to-pattern.
* script-fu-copy-visible was removed (and not moved to gimp-data-extras).
* New test scripts.
- New gimp-help-main script to link to the "Table of Contents" of the manual,
added to the "Help > User Manual" submenu.
- PSP: added support to load PSP ICC Profile data.
Translations:
- Many non-translatable strings were made translatable. Various other
localization bugs were handled.
API:
- Changes in libgimpconfig:
* GimpConfig serialization doesn't break anymore if one property
serialization fails. GIMP will now continue to serialize the rest. In
particular, it will allow to retrieve as many arguments as possible
between plug-in runs.
- Changes in libgimp:
* GimpResource can now be (de)serialized using the data name and collection
so that we are now able to retrieve a used resource quite reliably between
runs.
Build:
- Windows 10 becomes the new minimal support for the 3.0 stable series on
Windows. This bump happens because of end-of-support by Microsoft itself,
and also by MSYS2 project which is our base for the official installers.
- CI now generates babl and GEGL API reference HTML as artifact tarballs.
Overview of Changes from GIMP 2.99.14 to GIMP 2.99.16
=====================================================
Core:
- "Anchor" tooltip changing depending on whether we are floating over a layer
or layer mask.
- GIMP_TIMER_START|END are no-op on release builds.
- Ctrl-F overridden in our item dockables to trigger our item search popover
(multi-item selection, ability to use regexp or glob search by enabling these
in Preferences, etc.) rather than the default GTK selection popup for tree
views.
- All code is now multi-item aware (even though it might mean specifically
forbidding using some features on multiple items).
- Better support of non-ASCII characters in paths on Windows and other fixes
for Windows: API un-deprecation, unicode variants of functions…
- Copy|Cut-Paste code reworked further.
- Action "Crop to Selection" renamed to "Resize Layers to Selection".
- Action "Crop to Content" renamed to "Crop Layers to Content".
- If any opened image (with a display) is dirty, then GIMP will now inhibit the
log-out event on OSes which support it.
- Port from GtkAction/GtkUIManager to GAction/GMenu finished.
- The action search now shows the top menu path for actions when available.
- Actions can now be attributed multiple shortcuts. The duplicate actions
ending in `-accel` were removed in favor of multiple shortcuts and a few
secondary (semantic) shortcuts were added such as `Copy`/`Cut`/`Paste`
buttons for relevant actions, or `ZoomIn`/`ZoomOut` for canvas zoom,
`Forward`/`Back` to navigate through image tabs, but also some numpad
shortcuts like the `/` divide from the numpad for the action search
(additionally to the base keyboard `/` key).
It is not possible to attribute several shortcuts from GUI yet.
- An action is automatically generated for all GEGL operations which would
normally appear in the GEGL Operation tool. This includes in particular
third-party GEGL operations which might be user-installed. It makes these
filters also searchable in the action search, usable in menus and shortcuts
can be assigned as well.
- If present, the GEGL key "gimp:menu-label" will be used to set the short
label of the generated action (short labels are typically used in menus since
the menu path can serve as context). Otherwise the "title" with appended
"..." is used.
- GimpAction now have a concept of short vs. long labels, which can be used in
different places. In particular, in action search, we usually want the long
label, whereas in menus, we usually want the short label as we have context
(though the latter can be tweaked by a custom "label-variant" attribute in
.ui files).
- New "Middle Gray (CIELAB)" fill option (new image or new layer).
- Stroke Selection: "Line" and "Paint tool" styles are now in a stack
switcher instead of radio buttons. More advanced options are not "hidden"
anymore in a foldable widget.
- New grayscale color picking mode.
- .aco palettes are now imported with babl. As a result, it is now possible to
import CIE Lab palettes (colorspace 7)
- Action search now displays a "help" icon which can be clicked to show the
currently selected action's manual page (or the action search manual page if
no actions are selected). Alternatively the F1 shortcut will do the same.
- Basic matrix operations code was optimized.
- Fill/Stroke Path/Selection split the "Solid color" option into a "Foreground
color" and "Background color".
- Standardize to "X-bit" wording (e.g. "32-bit floating point" rather "32 bit
floating point").
Tools:
- GEGL Operation: auto-activate when enabled.
- Transform tools and GEGL operation don't auto-activate when opening a new
image or changing the active image.
- Align tool: "use extents of layer contents" also applies to the alignment
reference (not only the target objects).
- Color picker: pick in the image's RGB space.
- Text tool: new tool option "Show on-canvas editor" to toggle the visibility
of the on-canvas dialog.
- Unified Transform tool: the transform matrix is now selectable in the
on-canvas dialog (for instance to be easily re-usable in other software).
Graphical User Interface:
- Default, Compact and Gray themes now display a three-dot handle to paned
separators to improve accessibility and discoverability of the drag ability.
- The paned separator width is also increased a bit for accessibility (though
the Compact theme keeps a smaller separator width).
- Consistently use "Soft-proofing" wording instead of "Softproofing" or "Soft
proofing"
- The "GEGL Operation…" item was moved out of the "Filters > Generic" menu and
into the "Tools" menu.
- If present, the GEGL key "gimp:menu-path" will now be used by GIMP to create
a menu item for an operation in a given menu path.
- Default theme is less dark and the previous Default theme is renamed
"Darker".
- "Default" theme does not use smaller font size (than system theme) anymore;
but the "Compact" theme now does.
- New option "Merge menu and title bar" in Preferences > Image Windows: this
is basically an option to switch to Client Side Decoration for the image
windows (menu will be inside the title bar). It is OFF by default.
Actions:
- "tools-rotate-arbitrary" and "tools-rotate-image-arbitrary" are now disabled
when no image is opened.
Plug-ins:
- JPEG-XL:
* Initial support for CMYK/A JPEGXL export: Key and Alpha data is saved in
extra channels, and the simulation profile is saved as well.
Per the specification developers, the format does not support 'naive' CMYK
conversion, so a profile is required for export. The option will be
disabled if not set.
* Support libjxl 0.9: some API were removed which would have broken
the plug-in build. Now it should work both with old and new
version.
- Script-fu:
* Byte support: add a new type 'byte' to be able to handle binary data while
still retaining the utf8 char and string behavior.
* Enum values are now generated from GIR.
- Script-fu console: command history now persists across GIMP sessions.
- PSD:
* PSD clipping paths: import and export support.
* Unsupported features are now listed in a dialog on import.
* Add compatibility notice on export: some people have noted that legacy
layer modes have better compatibility when exporting PSDs and reopening
them in Photoshop.
* New "file-psd-load-metadata" procedure to be used by other plug-ins in
order to load Photoshop-format metadata. Some formats in particular allow
PSD style metadata (e.g. see TIFF and JPEG).
- TIFF:
* PSD metadata (both in image or layer level) can now be loaded by calling
the new "file-psd-load-metadata" PDB procedure.
* IBM PC Formatted TIFF layers are now supported on import.
- JPEG:
* PSD metadata (image level only, e.g. paths) can now be loaded by calling
the new "file-psd-load-metadata" PDB procedure.
* Clipping path import added.
* Option "4:2:2 horizontal (chroma halved)" renamed to "4:2:2 (chroma halved
horizontally)" and "4:2:2 vertical (chroma halved)" renamed to "4:4:0
(chroma halved vertically)". Research indicates it to be the most usual
notation for these options.
- DDS:
* OpenMP support enabled when available on the build machine.
- All Python 3 plug-ins whose Python 2 variants used to have a GUI now also
have one.
- Script "Predator" removed.
- PAM: import and export (formats: GRAYSCALE, GRAYSCALE_ALPHA, RGB, RGB_ALPHA)
support added. PAM files are essentially PPM files with a different header
format and alpha/16 bit support.
- GIF:
* Load error message handling improved.
* Keep GIF's full palette on import (sometimes needed for consistency when
used in a specific pipeline, e.g. a videogame engine with fixed palette).
- PCX:
* new radio option "override-palette" to override PCX 1 bit palette.
* 8bpp with 4 planes in PCX/DC import support added (we were only supporting
3 planes).
- QOI: new format support (import and export).
- Amiga IFF/ILBM: initial support for importing indexed ILBM, Amiga PBM, and
ACBM images.
- DCX: new import support (DCX files are containers that store up to 1023 PCX
files).
- Plug-ins ported to GAction: animation-play, colormap-remap, ifs-compose,
gfig, ImageMap.
- Plug-ins ported to GimpProcedureConfig and GimpProcedureDialog:
align-layers, hot, wavelet-decompose, file-sunras, file-heif, file-tga,
file-pat, file-xpm, file-csource, file-jp2-load, file-dds (import),
file-sgi, file-fli, file-pnm, file-gbr, file-psp, file-aa, bmp-save,
despeckle, blinds, contrast-retinex, jigsaw, nl-filter, destripe, file-mng,
file-html-table, file-xbm, file-pdf-load, file-gif-save, file-ps,
border-average, mail, checkerboard.
- metadata-viewer and metadata-editor: graphical interfaces are not built from
GtkBuilder .ui files anymore. These were the last instances of using this
format (except for our new menus!) for creating full GUIs as we don't want
to go this way anymore!
- FITS:
* Ported to cfitsio library for loading/exporting. This allows us to
import compressed FITS files (GZIP, HCOMP, PLIO, RICE) in 8/16/32
bit and float/double precision.
* As a result of the port, this plug-in is now optional.
- ILBM: "Hold and Modify" (HAM) mode use control bits to increase the
palette beyond what's stored in the CMAP chunk. We now check if HAM
mode is set and then interprets the plane bits accordingly.
API:
- Changes in libgimpwidgets:
* New functions:
+ gimp_int_store_new_array(): variant of gimp_int_store_new() which will
work in bindings.
+ gimp_spin_scale_get_mnemonic_keyval()
* Improved annotations or usage:
+ gimp_procedure_dialog_get_spin_scale(): factor must be 1.0 for integer
properties.
- Changes in libgimp:
* New classes:
+ GimpResource: with unique int ID, instead of data name. Actual data will
be one of the following subclasses:
+ GimpBrush
+ GimpFont
+ GimpGradient
+ GimpPalette
+ GimpPattern
* New functions:
+ gimp_procedure_dialog_fill_scrolled_window()
+ gimp_procedure_dialog_get_size_entry()
* Improved annotations or usage:
+ set_i18n() method of GimpPlugIn expects a UTF-8 catalog directory.
+ clarify gimp_image_set_file() usage (only for XCF files).
+ gimp_image_add_sample_point()
+ gimp_image_get_sample_point_position()
- Changes in libgimpbase:
* New functions:
+ gimp_bind_text_domain()
+ gimp_value_array_copy()
* Improved annotations or usage:
+ gimp_locale_directory() returns a string in the OS encoding for all but
Windows (UTF-8), i.e. GLib "filename" encoding.
+ Metadata "Exif.Image.ImageResources" and "Exif.Image.0x935c" are not
exported anymore. These are specific to Photoshop, and while we cannot
modify them, they can contain sensitive information (e.g. a thumbnail).
+ Exif.Photo.PixelXDimension and Exif.Photo.PixelYDimension metadata tags
will now be updated (if they already exist in the image) when resizing
and exporting.
- Changes in libgimpconfig:
GStrv config properties are now properly serialized and deserialized for use
as plug-ins arguments.
* New functions:
+ gimp_config_serialize_strv()
+ gimp_config_deserialize_strv()
- PDB:
* Remove GimpUint8Array in favor of GBytes.
Build:
- MacPorts support for macOS added (this is even now the official support as we
build our new packages with MacPorts).
- meson: make sure libgimp does not depend on GTK+.
- GLib requirement bumped to version 2.70 as minimum.
- Improved C99 compatibility of IPC_RMID check.
- Windows: port fileicon.ico from gimp-2-10 with additional sizes for clearer
icons on different resolutions and displays.
- Improve our build scripts to better handle sanitizer tools.
- Fix some broken unit tests in the meson build.
- Meson build options 'lua', 'javascript' and 'python' are now features, and
not boolean. I.e. use option values 'enabled'/'disabled' (defaulting to
'auto') instead of true/false.
- Meson build 'vala-plugins' option was renamed to simply 'vala'.
- Added dependency to Exiv2 0.27.4.
- JUnit reports from Meson for the CI build.
- autotools was fully dropped!
- Debian 12 bookworm is now our base platform for CI, but also for deciding
whether we can bump a dependency minimum required version or not. This is a
consequence of approaching GIMP 3.0 release so we don't want to bump minimum
versions too high.
- GEGL requirement bumped to GEGL 0.4.46.
- Windows installer's welcome image is now generated in several sizes
from our splash screen image, avoiding discrepancies as well as
unnecessarily filling our repository with a history of duplicate
images.
- Add some logic to common/ and python/ plug-ins to facilitate running
GIMP from the build directory (without being installed) while still
able to load all plug-ins.
- gtk-mac-integration was dropped as a dependency on macOS. It made problems
and is apparently less needed with GTK+3.
- Supported macOS version was bumped from macOS 10.12 to macOS 10.13.
Debugging:
- New --runtime option to `flatpak-releases` debugging script (a dev tool
allowing for instance to bisect issues through flatpak builds). This option
allows to list the runtime builds (additionally to the main GIMP flatpaks).
Documentation:
- More developer docs is being moved to the new developer website.
- Better clarify licensing of files under data/.
- Improve flatpak maintenance doc (build/flatpak/README.md).
Translations:
- 25 translations were updated: Basque, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (China),
Chinese (Taiwan), Danish, Esperanto, French, Georgian, German, Greek,
Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Lithuanian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese,
Romanian, Russian, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian.
Overview of Changes from GIMP 2.99.12 to GIMP 2.99.14
=====================================================
Core:
- The download button in About dialog when a new version is available
will now show the development download page when running unstable
branch code.
- The update check on macOS now uses native HTTPS-able API, so that we
don't have to wait for GIO to have HTTPS modules for macOS.
- The main process is now run as a GimpApp which is a new class derived from
GtkApplication. The main process of `gimp-console` on the other hand is a
`GimpConsoleApp` which is derived from GApplication. Both new classes share
a same GimpCoreApp interface. This is a main step for the GTK+3 port.
- Various improvements on awareness of multi-item selection across core
features. A notable fix is the preview when transforming multiple layers at
once (with various transform tools). Various actions are now multi-drawable
aware as well.
- New "Vectors Structure" in the XCF format: XCF files (format bumped to
version 18) can now store and load all the usual and common properties of
other items. In other words, it makes XCF now able to store locks, color
tags and several selected paths.
- XCF saving with RLE and zlib encoding are now multi-threaded and therefore
much faster in most cases.
- Pasting an image now creates a new layer by default (not a Floating Layer
anymore). The only 3 cases where we still have floating items are:
* when pasting into a layer mask;
* when doing quick copy/cut paste on-canvas with the Alt modifiers;
* when floating layers explicitly with the "Float" action.
- Copy-paste code was deeply reviewed and re-specified in the light of
multi-item selection; it's still a WIP:
* When pasting several drawables, we currently paste them over the top
selected layer (visually in Layers dockable).
* Pasted data position was rewritten, based on existing logic, but taking
into account the multiple selected items.
* Pasting a selected area from multiple layers still creates multiple
layers, not merged pixel contents as a single layer.
* New layers created when copying from a selection are consistently the
offset and dimensions of the bounding box of the dimension.
* When a layer and one of its group layer parent are selected, it is
equivalent to have only the child layer selected.
- 2 new actions were added: "Paste as Single Layer" and "Paste as Single Layer
in Place" under the "Paste as" submenu of Edit menu. These paste the copied
layers as a single merged layer, instead of as several layers (as "Paste"
and "Paste in Place" do).
Graphical User Interface:
- New "Gray" theme based on a 18.42% luminance middle-gray background, which
should be a good neutral environment for color work.
- The foreground/background editor in the toolbox will now take into account
the toolbox icon size and resize itself accordingly (live, as you change
theme). This allows to have really narrow toolbox when you use small icons.
- Theme-override icon size selection in Preferences > Themes: this allows to
override theme-set icon sizes, with a global concept of small, medium, large
and huge. The following widgets are so far modified: toolbox icons, fg/bg
editor in toolbox, fg/bg editor in Colors dockable, dockables tab icons,
bottom buttons (in the button box) of dockables, header eye and lock icons
above item trees, and eye and lock icon switches in item tree cells.
- Symmetry dockable contents is now shown, yet deactivated, when no images are
opened, improving discoverability.
- Reworked the "Convert to * Working Space?" dialog into a "Keep the Embedded
Working Space?" one. Keeping an image working space is now the recommended
and default action. "Convert" became an explicit action requiring to click
(neither mapped to Enter nor Escape keys).
- "Floating Selection" renamed to "Floating Layer" or "Floating Mask"
depending on the type of item it applies to.
- "Floating Masks" are now drawn above the layer mask in the Layers dockable,
making the fact that they would anchor to the below layer mask (not the
layer) much more obvious.
- "Paste into Selection" and "Paste into Selection in Place" were moved under
the "Paste as" submenu of Edit menu.
Tools:
- Text tool: new "Outlined" and "Outlined and filled" options, with various
sub-options to choose the outline style, color, pattern, width, cap and join
styles, miter limit, anti-aliasing and dash pattern.
- Align tool:
* now multi-item aware, it is much more usable than it used to be when we
had to click on canvas to select items.
* On-canvas clicks are now only needed to select guides (Alt or Alt-Shift
click and selected guide colors change) or for the reference object
(normal click).
* Also the reference object gets on-canvas handles and the name is written
in the dockable, making it obvious if you selected the right reference or
not.
* Moreover the selected reference will now loop when layers are stacked on
each other, which allow to select a bottom layer, even if there are layers
above it everywhere.
* New option "Use extents of layer contents" to Align tool: this is similar
to first run "Crop to Content" on every layer to align or distribute
(without actually cropping the layers).
* Fine-grained align/distribute button sensitivity to make it more obvious
when an action would not make any change anyway.
* New anchor point setting (pivot widget) to choose which part of the target
items will be aligned or distributed.
* Get rid of various broken distribution actions.
* Distribution actions don't move the 2 extreme (top/bottom or left/right
depending on distribution direction) targets, but distribute all other
targets within their range. It is more consistent with how it works in
other software.
* Adding 2 "Distribute with evenly (horizontal|vertical) gaps" actions,
which distribute by keeping a common gap between objects instead of
between anchor points.
* Offset settings have been removed.
- Transform tools are now auto-activated on selection (and when switching
images or item selection).
Plug-ins:
- PDF:
* Export code was ported to GimpProcedureDialog.
* New "root-layers-only" argument to "file-pdf-save", which comes
with a checkbox in the export dialog to allow exporting as pages
the root layers only. The main usage is to organize your pages'
contents in layer groups.
- AVIF:
* RGB AVIF compatibility with Safari on iOS 16.0: Some AVIF images are
rendered differently in Apple's implementation compared to implementations
of Google and Mozilla. See: https://github.com/AOMediaCodec/av1-avif/issues/195
This changes requires libheif 1.10.0 though the plug-in can still build
with older libheif.
- PSD:
* export of CMYK(A) files added, with 8 or 16-bit precision per channel,
using a CMYK soft-proof profile for conversion.
* Paths are now exported with PSD files.
- JPEG-XL:
* Metadata import/export now supported (requires libjxl 0.7.0).
- Python-Console:
* sys.stdout.flush() implemented as a no-op inside the console, to be able
to easily copy-paste code, or using libraries which flush the output.
- ICNS:
* Initial support for loading and exporting.
- TIFF:
* New toggle to optionally load reduced pages. We keep a heuristic to try
and guess whether these are thumbnails (single reduced image in the second
position), but it's only used to decide whether the option is checked by
default or not. It is now up to anyone to decide or not whether they want
to load these reduced images.
API:
- Changes in libgimp:
* Abstract method get_window() of GimpProgressVtable had its signature
changed. The window ID is now a guint64.
* New functions:
+ gimp_text_layer_set_markup()
+ gimp_image_get_selected_channels()
+ gimp_image_get_selected_vectors()
+ gimp_image_list_selected_channels()
+ gimp_image_list_selected_vectors()
+ gimp_image_set_selected_channels()
+ gimp_image_set_selected_vectors()
+ gimp_image_take_selected_channels()
+ gimp_image_take_selected_vectors()
+ gimp_image_list_selected_drawables()
* Updated functions:
+ gimp_vectors_stroke_translate() now uses offsets in double type.
* New classes:
+ GimpTextLayer: child class of GimpLayer.
- Changes in libgimpwidgets:
* Updated widgets:
+ GimpPickButton now has a specific implementation for Windows. In
particular it improves color picking with multi-monitor and scales
different than 100%.
Build:
- meson requirement bump to meson 0.56.0.
- Many fixes to the meson build scripts, making it closer to be our
official build for GIMP 3.0.
- The CI now generates a tarball containing the GIMP references,
generated by gi-docgen and g-ir-doc.
- Improved Clang 15.0.0 support.
- "win*-nightly" jobs were added back and are now more efficient with the
--output-dll-list option.
- babl requirement bumped to babl 0.1.98.
- GEGL requirement bumped to GEGL 0.4.40.
- GIMP macOS builds (gimp-macos-build repository) was moved to using MacPorts
in order to take advantage of a bigger community to maintain our
dependencies.
- GIMP now has an Apple Silicon build.
Overview of Changes from GIMP 2.99.10 to GIMP 2.99.12
=====================================================
Core:
- Added concept of "hidden item" to a GimpImage. This would allow to
process non attached items for internal processing more easily.
- Do not show a crosshair anymore when "Show brush outline" is
checked and "Show pointer for paint tools" is unchecked, if the
brush outline cannot be drawn (in which case a fallback 4-arcs
generic outline showing the size is displayed), for instance because
using a dynamic changing the size.
- When both "Show brush outline" and "Show pointer for paint tools"
are unchecked, show a minimal visual feedback of a few pixels only,
as inconspicuous as possible, instead of a crosshair.
- Move and reorganize pointer-related settings in Preferences from
"Image Windows" to "Input Devices" tabs.
- On macOS, delay opening new images dropped on the application icon
in the dock to after GIMP is fully initialized.
- Some code reorganization and factorization of image colormap and
palette handling.
- Language changes will trigger plug-in query() call at next GIMP
restart. This allows to have strings in query() and stored in GIMP
config being re-localized. This implies both explicit language
changes in Preferences or system language changes when GIMP is set
to follow system language.
- Keyboard grab removed from the canvas display, hence getting rid of
annoying grab permission warnings on Wayland.
- Preferences > Display > Transparency > Check style has now a new
option "Custom checks" allowing to select any RGB colors.
- Full migration from intltool to gettext only.
- The soft-proof profile, soft-proofing rendering intent and whether
black point compensation is used when soft-proofing are now image
data. These have also been moved to the Image menu (out of View).
These 3 simulation data are also stored in the XCF file now.
- Hacks on canvas rulers and statusbar added in GIMP 2.99.10 for macOS
triggering too big redraws were removed. This depends on patches
added to upcoming GTK+ 3.24.35.
- CMYK color picking and sample point now use babl and the space
specified by the soft-proof profile set on the image, if any.
- The "Create New Image" dialog now has settings for the simulation
profile, intent and black point compensation. This is also shown in
templates and the "Default Image" tab in Preferences, and has been
removed from the "Color Management" tab, because these are now first
and foremost image data.
- GimpColorFrame is now current image's simulation profile/intent/bpc
aware. In other words, CMYK shown by the color picker or in sample
point shows values in the correct simulation space (not in some
default CMYK space).
- A new default action to change the current brush size was mapped to
Alt + right button click.
- Some Preferences settings have been moved to a new Preferences >
Canvas Interaction tab.
- All on-canvas interactions (panning, canvas rotation, etc.) are now
customizable in Preferences > Canvas Interaction > Modifiers tab. It
allows to switch/change the modifiers used for an action, or even
just remove some modifiers mapping (when you never use an action,
e.g. some people say the canvas rotation is not useful to them).
- GtkAction-s can also be mapped to modifiers now through the same
settings.
- GIMP themes can now have a "gimp-dark.css" file which will be used
if the "Use dark theme variant if available" option was checked.
- The FG/BG editor area in the toolbox is now sized relatively to
toolbox icon size, allowing for it to be much bigger when using big
icons, or smaller when using small icons (which can e.g. be aligned
on a very narrow single column for people who appreciate this
organization).
- The Welcome dialog can now show "demo" bullet points, from scenarios
written within the Appstream metadata.
Tools:
- The "Fill by line art detection" mode of the Bucket Fill tool got
the following improvements:
* New "Stroke borders" option where you can select a paint tool
(except source tools) to stroke the fill mask before filling with
the color. The settings will be the ones as set on the
corresponding tool (except for the color).
* The options got reorganized in 3 sections (Line Art Detection,
Line Art Closure and Fill Borders) and some options were reworded.
This should hopefully make the now many options more
understandable.
- Full text layer's text size will now be changed when changing font
size in the text editor window, when no text is selected.
- Raise tool options before blinking specific settings widgets when
some tools fail to work because of various tool options settings
(e.g. selection tool cannot remove from an empty selection; warp
tool cannot stroke; move tool cannot move because of the types of
object to move isn't selected; and so on).
Graphical User Interface:
- New "Drag to Zoom" mode and speed settings in Preferences. Existing
drag-to-zoom behavior was linear depending only on pointer direction
(which makes it more or less time-based if we consider that pointer
events are regular). The new mode will take the actual distance
moved into account allowing to go faster or slower by dragging
further or not. The "speed" settings allows a finer zoom speed
control for both the old and new modes.
- Touchpad gesture rotation (2-finger pinch) on canvas now
implemented. Note that rotation or scaling by pinch are exclusive so
GIMP will detect the expected behavior through the initial movement
and will therefore lock on either rotation or scaling for the whole
duration of the pinch.
- Slight tweak of the "You will have to restart GIMP" popup: the list
now uses nicer "bullet point" characters and the nick (short
description) is shown rather than the internal property name.
- New soft-proof toggle in status bar to see the soft-proofing status
and enable/disable it. It is only active when a soft-proof profile
was set.
- GimpContainerTreeView (e.g. Layers/Channels/Vectors dockables) now
have zooming through ctrl+mouse wheel (for preview size).
- GimpContainerTreeView (e.g. Layers/Channels/Vectors dockables) now
have zooming with touchpad pinch (touchscreen pinch now kinda exists
but is not so usable in our tests, at least on Linux through
libinput) for preview size.
- Gradient editor now has zooming with touchpad pinch (touchscreen
pinch not so fancy either, at least on Linux through libinput,
similar to GimpContainerTreeView case).
- A new soft-proofing pop-over dialog appears when right-clicking the
new soft-proof toggle in the status bar. It allows to view or change
all soft-proofing related settings (whether they are associated to
the image, such as the profile, intent or black-point compensation;
or to the view, such as the out-of-gamut check) very easily.
- New "Default" theme containing a dark and light variant. As the name
implies, this theme is now made the default theme on new
installations.
- New "Compact" theme containing a dark and light variant.
Command Line Interface:
- Unless only one batch interpreter is available, there is no default
interpreter anymore (it used to be script-fu). Therefore if you set
`--batch` but not `--batch-interpreter`, GIMP will output an error
message and will list the available interpreters.
- GIMP will stop running the batch commands as soon as one command
fails (it won't try the following ones).
- A new `--quit` option allows you to quit GIMP immediately after
running the batch commands.
- If `--quit` is set and batch commands are run, the GIMP binary exit
code will propagate errors from any batch failure. Exit codes are
taken from common Linux error codes: 0 for success, 69 for service
unavailable (e.g. setting a non-existing interpreter name), 64 for
usage (e.g. not specifying any interpreter or calling errors), 70
for execution errors (bugs in the interpreter plug-in) and 130 for
canceling the call.
Plug-ins:
- BigTIFF: our TIFF plug-in now officially supports BigTIFF import and
export.
* Import was actually already working transparently if you had
a recent enough libtiff. Now the recent libtiff is enforced by
dependency requirements.
* Export support was added with a checkbox in the interactive dialog
and a new "bigtiff" argument in the "file-tiff-save" PDB
procedure.
* When an interactive export of ClassicTIFF fails for the explicit
reason of "Maximum TIFF file size exceeded", the export dialog is
raised again with a message proposing to try again as BigTIFF or
trying another compression algorithm.
This allows because discoverability and understandibility of the
issue, while not forcing BigTIFF export (since it might not be
supported everywhere).
- GIF: new option to specify a number of repeat for animated GIF
(rather than single run vs. infinite loop only).
- help-browser: rewritten to use GtkAction and GtkApplication, even
though it's now a deprecated plug-in (though it's a good example for
porting other plug-ins the same way).
- PNG:
* the format does not have any flag for linear RGB, but it can
simply include a linear profile (or a 1.0 gAMA chunk). Therefore
since we always attach the profile when importing (or transform
the gAMA chunk into a profile), we now always load PNG images as
non-linear backend.
* Add toggle to choose PNG bit depth behavior.
- python-fu-eval and plug-in-script-fu-eval ported to new
GimpBatchProcedure class.
- JPEG:
* CMYK export is now possible. It uses the "Soft-proofing"
profile set on the image.
* CMYK import ported to GEGL/babl conversion. The CMYK profile in
the JPEG image will be stored as soft-proof profile on the image.
- WebP:
* new option "Use Sharp YUV" available in non-lossless export.
It renders sharper edges at the cost of a slower export.
* On export, the "bad image dimensions" error message is now more
accurate and tells the max dimension possible for WebP images
(16383 as it's stored on 14 bits).
- DDS:
* 16-bit masks now supported.
* DDS images with single 16-bit channel support added.
* DDS images with 2 16-bit channels correctly converted to 16-bit
RGB images.
* More robust DDS loading.
- script-fu:
* Various updates to get the API back in shape.
* Porting doc updated.
* "script-fu-server" was now extracted into its own separate
plug-in so that it doesn't need to run permanently with the
script-fu extension (could be seen as security hazard too) and it
also makes each of these plug-ins more robust by being on their
own process each.
* A new `gimp-script-fu-interpreter-3.0` binary is installed
globally to be used to create Scheme plug-ins, similarly to other
plug-ins, in particular in the plug-ins/ directory, not the
scripts/ directory anymore. Moreover it makes the whole script-fu
infrastructure much more robust as script-fu individual scripts
won't crash the whole script-fu extension any longer (they only
crash themselves).
Note: this is not a GObject Introspected Scheme binding, just our
own binding based on script-fu interpreter. Script-fu plug-ins
still don't have access to the whole of libgimp.
* New function 'script-fu-register-filter' to declare a multi-layer
capable script.
* Many script-fu scripts were ported to newer API.
- FLI:
* Internal type usage improvements, mnemonics added, etc.
* 1-frame animation now loaded correctly (it's not really an
animation then, yet it should still open!).
* Better error handling.
* Layer names now include the delay in ms.
* More robust FLI/FLC loading, double-checking data rather than
assuming that the file writer properly followed the specs.
- Several plug-ins now follow the user-set checkboard color
preferences, when relevant.
- RAW data:
* Improved export dialog with better labels and ported to new dialog
generation API.
* Improved import dialog, ported to new dialog generation API, with
factorized code to more easily handle more cases.
* High bit depth import/export support.
* All the exportable formats can now be loaded back.
* "file-raw-load" and "file-raw-save" procedures API are now much
better with all relevant arguments.
* "file-hgt-load" doesn't show a dialog anymore when sample spacing
detection worked correctly since we already have all the necessary
information.
- WBMP: new plug-in to load WBPM image files. It is still limited
support and doesn't support all types of WBMP images.
- TIFF:
* 8 and 16-bit CMYK(A) TIFF files can be exported, using the
image soft-proof profile.
* Imported CMYK TIFF profiles are now set as soft-proof profile
on the image.
- SVG: on import, when parsing fails, GIMP will propose to disable
size parsing limitations, while explaining this has security
implications and should only be done on SVG files from trusted
sources.
- PSD:
* Import now uses babl conversion inconditionally, even for CMYK
images, using the soft-proof profile set on the image.
* Improved error logging during load.
* CMYK profile on a CMYK PSD file is now stored as soft-proof
profile in the image.
* Added support for extra layer mask: According to the specs the
extra mask (which they call real user supplied layer mask) is used
"when both a user mask and a vector mask are present".
We haven't seen an example that has the extra mask, so not sure
which of the masks would appear first.
For now assuming that the extra mask will be first. The advantage
of adding this here now, is that we won't try to add a mask
channel as a normal channel.
* Minimal support of duotone data: on import, a duotone image will
be imported as grayscale image with an alert and the color
information will be stored in a parasite; on export, a dialog will
propose you to re-include the duotone data if the image is still
grayscale. This allows for a roundtrip in GIMP without losing the
duotone information.
- ANI: new import/export support.
API:
- Changes in libgimpbase:
* gimp_checks_get_colors() added.
* gimp_checks_get_shades() removed (replaced by gimp_checks_get_colors())
- Changes in libgimpcolor:
* New functions:
+ gimp_color_managed_get_simulation_profile()
+ gimp_color_managed_simulation_profile_changed()
+ gimp_color_managed_get_simulation_bpc()
+ gimp_color_managed_get_simulation_intent()
+ gimp_color_managed_simulation_bpc_changed()
+ gimp_color_managed_simulation_intent_changed()
- Changes in libgimp:
* New functions:
+ gimp_image_metadata_save_filter()
+ gimp_check_custom_color1()
+ gimp_check_custom_color2()
+ gimp_procedure_dialog_get_int_radio()
+ gimp_procedure_dialog_get_file_chooser()
+ gimp_image_get_simulation_profile()
+ gimp_image_set_simulation_profile()
+ gimp_image_set_simulation_profile_from_file()
+ gimp_image_get_selected_drawables()
+ gimp_image_get_simulation_bpc()
+ gimp_image_get_simulation_intent()
+ gimp_image_set_simulation_bpc()
+ gimp_image_set_simulation_intent()
* Removed functions:
+ gimp_plug_in_set_translation_domain()
+ image_get_active_drawable()
+ image_get_active_layer()
+ image_set_active_layer()
+ image_get_active_channel()
+ image_set_active_channel()
+ image_get_active_vectors()
+ image_set_active_vectors()
* Updated functions:
+ gimp_procedure_dialog_get_widget() now supports
%G_TYPE_PARAM_FILE and %G_TYPE_PARAM_ENUM properties.
+ gimp_prop_file_chooser_button_new() now works with
G_PARAM_SPEC_OBJECT having a value_type == G_TYPE_FILE
(additionally to GIMP_PARAM_SPEC_CONFIG_PATH properties).
* Functions skipped by bindings:
+ gimp_get_images() (in favor of gimp_list_*() variant)
+ gimp_image_get_layers() (in favor of gimp_image_list_*() variant)
+ gimp_image_get_channels() (in favor of gimp_image_list_*() variant)
+ gimp_image_get_vectors() (in favor of gimp_image_list_*() variant)
+ gimp_image_get_selected_layers() (in favor of gimp_image_list_*()
variant)
+ gimp_item_get_children() (in favor of gimp_item_list_*() variant)
* New class:
+ GimpBatchProcedure: procedure usable as a batch interpreter on
command line.
* Protocol bumped to handle the check colors passed at call time on
the wire.
* Plug-ins are now expected to have their localization in a Gettext
catalog folder locale/ under their main directory, named the same
way as this directory (i.e. usually the plug-in name). If the
catalog is absent, a message will be outputted on stderr. To
override this behavior, a GimpPlugIn is encouraged to override the
new set_i18n() method. If it returns FALSE, localization is
disabled (or it may be implemented in a different way, for
instance with another system than Gettext); if it returns TRUE,
you can set a different subfolder and catalog name.
* The core does not localize menu items from plug-ins anymore. All
plug-ins are now expected to handle their localization within
their code. In particular gimp_procedure_set_menu_label() and
gimp_procedure_set_documentation() should now pass the localized
text. With gettext, it usually means passing arguments through
gettext() and not just marking them with N_().
- Changes in libgimpwidgets:
* Freedesktop portal implementation of GimpPickButton now checks the
version of the XDG portal since `PickColor()` API only got added
in version 2.
* New classes:
+ GimpIntRadioFrame
* New functions:
+ gimp_color_notebook_set_simulation()
+ gimp_color_selection_set_simulation()
+ gimp_color_selector_set_simulation()
* Removed functions:
+ gimp_prop_int_radio_box_new()
* Updated functions:
+ GimpColorNotebook, GimpColorSelection and GimpColorSelector are
now ported to babl code and are simulation space aware.
+ GimpPickButton will now use the X11 color picking API as a
default when GIMP is running on X11 (instead of trying the
portals first), because it has color space information of the
display (so we can convert back the color from display space to
image space); and also on some desktop, the portal looks
available while it's actually not implemented (hence picking
fails).
This fixes or improves the color picking in the Colors dockable,
in Change Foreground/Background Color dialogs, etc.
- Changes in PDB:
* gimp-plug-in-domain-register removed.
Modules:
- The CMYK color selector is now simulation space aware, i.e. that it
shows CMYK values in the soft-proof profile space if a soft-proof
profile has been set.
Translations:
- New Galician and Georgian translations for the installer.
Build:
- libtiff dependency's minimum required version bumped to 4.0.0.
- gexiv2 dependency's minimum required version bumped to 0.14.0.
- Our meson/Debian CI now runs `meson dist` too.
- gvfs is marked as an expected dependency for GIMP (as a GIO module)
on Linux, since it seems we wouldn't have HTTP support without. This
is only written in the INSTALL file though, no tests are run on
configure time.
- The distribution stage now has a new `dev-docs` job containing both
the C API reference (gi-docgen) and the Python and Javascript (gjs)
ones (g-ir-doc).
- The `pdbgen` (generation of PDB source files) build step is finally
ported to meson too, which is a major step to one day consider this
build system out of the "experimental" zone.
- Windows installer's gettext files (.po) will now also contain
extracted comments from the source to give more context to
translators.
- Flatpak manifest upgraded with new version constraints so that the
flatpak-external-data-checker does not warn wrongly on major update
when we don't want to or can't update immediately.
- meson is now recommended for Windows and macOS builds and our
official installer and DMG respectively are now built (still from
CI) with meson.
- Flatpak manifest improved with version constraints for dependencies
where we should not update just yet (hence don't want new version
notifications).
- appstream-util replaced by appstreamcli for AppStream file testing
(requires appstreamcli 0.15.3 or over).
- gi-docgen API documentation will now properly link to other API
namespaces thanks to a new urlmap file.
- Separate libgimp-scriptfu-3.0 library for a future where it will be
shared by several binaries.
- GEGL dependency's minimum required version bumped to 0.4.38.
- "flatpak" job now uses a gnome-runtime-images migrated to Quay.
- "win*-nightly" jobs removed.
- Improved meson infrastructure to support Windows installer languages
which don't have base language files provided by upstream InnoSetup.
We started using it for Kabyle (which was showing up as "English"
otherwise!).
- After various fixes and implementations of missing build features to
the meson scripts, we are going to start advising packagers (for all
platforms) to build GIMP 2.99.12 with meson as a trial by fire to
make it the new default build system.
- New "sources-meson" CI job to distribute a tarball built with the
meson scripts.
- INSTALL now targets meson build as a test recommendation. We'll see
if any issue arises from packagers!
- Improved support for homebrew build on macOS.
Documentation:
- Draft devel doc for scriptfu v3 script authors.
Overview of Changes from GIMP 2.99.8 to GIMP 2.99.10
====================================================
Core:
- Linked layers concept replaced by named sets of layers:
* One can now store your current selection of layers under any given
name and select it again later.
* You can also search for layers by their names with patterns
(as configured in Preferences, see next news item) and save this
pattern search if desired.
- Preferences > Interface now has an "Item search" with a dropdown
settings proposing the following values:
* Basic text search: this search does tokenization, case-folding and
UTF-8 normalization. Moreover ASCII alternates are compared, which
means that e.g. "e" would matched accented versions (such as "é"
or others).
* Glob pattern search: this is the GLib implementation of this
pattern syntax. It matches '*' (wildcard) and '?' (joker). GLib
docs notes also: "Note that in contrast to glob(), the '/'
character can be matched by the wildcards, there are no '[...]'
character ranges and '*' and '?' can not be escaped to include
them literally in a pattern."
* Regular expression search: Perl-compatible regular expressions as
implemented in GLib.
- New item visibility lock: forbidding to change the state of
visibility of a given item. This is useful when shift-clicking
massively items visibility, but you want to exclude some specific
items from the visibility switch.
- New internal API gimp_widget_blink_rect() to blink only specific
area of a widget, which may be useful for various notification-type
exchanges. This is used in particular to blink lock cells in
GimpItemTreeView in order to point attention to the reason why an
action is forbidden (e.g. when trying to paint on a layer with
pixels locked, a message would be shown on status bar and the "Lock
pixels" icon would blink).
- XCF version 16 with support of item sets.
- Wayland:
* Clean some popup code out of gtk_menu_popup() which is deprecated
and won't work anymore on Wayland (wrong positionning).
* Use GtkGestureDrag in ColorWheel module and ScrolledPreview widget
to avoid unwanted popups and make us future-proof for GTK4.
- macOS: various improvements for macOS support of the development
version. In particular the slowness issues have been solved and
various bugs have been fixed.
- The debug dialog only gets a backtrace of the main thread now,
because of some bugs in GDB locking GIMP when trying to get a full
backtrace for all threads.
- The line art data is now stored for a few additional minutes in the
user context after closing the bucket fill tool. This allows quick
switch between tools without forcing a recomputation of the line
art.
- Stroking a path with source tools (Clone, Heal…) is now possible
when the tool is active and a source was selected.
Technically it's more of a bug fix because the GUI existed as though
it was meant to work, but since the report has existed for more than
13 years and I'm not sure it has ever worked, it's worth writing it
here.
- Block the statusbar from needlessly triggering full canvas redraws
by not propagating its resize requests. This is quite a useful
optimization for macOS in particular (but any OS in general too).
- Alpha and position locks can now be set on layer groups. Alpha lock
on groups mostly works like pixel lock (except for the alpha channel
only). Position lock work both ways by forbidding moving child
layers but also parent layers.
- XCF version 17 with support of visibility locks, as well as ability
to set alpha or position locks on layer groups.
User Interface:
- Link icon removed from the Layers dockable.
- Lock icon its now made visible next to the "Eye" icon (visibility)
on each item row, where the Link icon was. It raises a popover to
switch all available locks (contents, position, visibility, alpha):
* This makes locks much more obvious rather than when they were at
the dockable header.
* This also works better with multiple selection of items (when one
selected item is locked and another is not, the lock button were
ending up in inconsistent state).
* This is clearer by showing or not icons (rather than always
showing several icons, yet with toggle design which is not even so
understandable depending on the theme used). If no locks are set,
nothing is shown; if only one lock is set, a specific icon is
shown; if several locks are set, a multi-lock icon is shown (and
one need to click to get the list of locks).
* Locks can now be set massively with shift and alt-click (see next
item) with the same logics as you can change visibility massively
on the eye button.
- Visibility (eye icon) and lock columns in the item dockables are
given an icon header to be more discoverable.
- Alt-click on eye and lock icons allows to massively switch
visibility/lock state but only within selected items (unlike
shift-click which switch within all items at same level).
- Channels and vectors are now multi-selectable (though actions may
have not been all updated yet to handle multiple items).
- On-hover indicators around inactive/unset eye/locked toggles in
Layer/Channels/Paths dialogs.
- GimpSpinScale made more compact.
- New "Welcome dialog" which appears only after a new installation or
an update, will show a few common links, and the release notes
(taken from the AppStream data, so they can even be localized).
- The new "Welcome dialog" comes with a new splash screen by Aryeom.
Tools:
- It is now possible to enable/disable dynamics in a single checkbox.
The dynamics "Dynamics Off" which used to be in the default list has
been removed as disabling dynamics is now equivalent and much faster
(it's also faster to get back to whatever dynamics you were using
before).
- A new action "context-dynamics-toggle" is available, allowing to
switch dynamics ON/OFF (see previous news item) with a shortcut.
- New option "Allow closing lines in selected layer" in the "Fill by
line art detection" mode of bucket fill tool. Basically this allows
to use the fill color (foreground or background color) as closure
color in the drawable to be filled. This is an additional step after
the line art computation to allow fast usage.
Plug-ins:
- PSD:
* new support for loading 16-bit per channel CMYK images.
* new support for files in LAB colorspace.
* new support for loading 32-bit per channel images (some code
existed yet may have never really worked).
* Add extra layer groups when loading PSD images with clipping
layers: PhotoShop handles clipping layers in a different way than
GIMP. The only way to have it look the same is by adding extra
layer groups. PSD layers that have clipping set, combined with the
first non clipping layer below it are grouped together in a new
layer group. Doing this results in the same image as the PSD
merged image unless there are other PSD elements in play that we
don't handle yet.
* PSD layers with clipping set need clip to backdrop as composite
mode: Certain PSD layers have a flag called clipping set to 1. We
were not handling this flag and had some reports about colors
bleeding where they were not supposed to. We are going to set
GIMP's layer composite_mode to GIMP_LAYER_COMPOSITE_CLIP_TO_BACKDROP,
which is the closest we can get to PhotoShop's clipping. With
this, the colors won't bleed anymore.
- JPEG XL:
* Bit depth now selectable in JXL export.
* Import in 8-bit and 16-bit integer precision now possible for
lossless images. (GIMP used to import all JXL images as 32-bit float
precision images).
* New very fast export settings: thunder and lightning (fastest).
* Compression slider is disabled for lossless.
- Screenshot:
* Remove KDE and GNOME screenshot portal in favor of Freedesktop
portal. Security restrictions make them more and more unsuable on
recent KDE and GNOME versions.
* Set the "interactive" option to TRUE for the Freedesktop API, so
that the screenshot options are presented immediately (instead of
taking a screenshot, then only proposing options to try again).
This is more consistent to how our non-D-Bus screenshot plug-in
used to work.
* Windows: cursor capture option now available.
- CUR: added load and export support for Microsoft Windows cursor
(.cur) files.
- HEIF: bit depth heuristic removed for the settings. The plug-in just
stores and set back the last used values as for other settings
instead of trying to be "clever".
- help-browser and webpage are now marked "unmaintained" and building
them is discouraged, except for developers. The reasons are: the
multiple problems for building, while it is not even available on
Windows anymore (and unsure if it will ever be solved anytime soon),
bringing features which nowadays most people have with browsers
installed by default on systems (allowing to read the manual and
take full webpage screenshots).
Build:
- Improved Coding Style document with commit message styling, git
usage, comment styling, natural language text rules, localization
and some section reorganization.
- GExiv2 dependency bumped to 0.12.2 (fixing bothersome warnings on
some unknown metadata domains).
- libjxl dependency bumped to 0.6.1.
- New meson option -Dcan-crosscompile-gir=true to force
GObject-Introspection generation even when cross-compiling (some
people manage to do it, e.g. with Yocto).
- Added .clang-format file and new CI pipeline to verify coding-style
issues in merge requests.
- New tool `flatpak-releases` to easily list and install specific
versions of our flatpak builds, which can be a great help when
debugging or trying to bisect with released binaries.
- Important refactoring of icon builds:
* Whether using meson or autotools, and whether installing vector
icons or raster ones (with --disable-vector-icons), the same lists
are always used and no icons are missing. The new custom tool
tools/generate-icon-makefiles.py makes sure the Makefile list is
in sync with the meson one.
The lists are committed in icons/icon-lists/ with a "usage
grouping" logics when possible.
* PNG versions for Color and Symbolic icon themes should not be
committed anymore. The Symbolic PNG version are generated with
GTK tool gtk-encode-symbolic-svg and the Color PNG version are
rendered with a new custom tool tools/colorsvg2png.c.
* New weekly CI to build with raster icons on meson and autotools
and making sure the build systems are well synced.
* Meson's -Dvec-icons option renamed to -Dvector-icons.
- meson dependency bumped to 0.53.0.
- We recommend fontconfig 2.13.95 or over on Windows where support for
user-installed fonts (feature appeared in Windows 1809) was
implemented. GIMP had its own workaround until now, which got
removed in this version.
- Optimization of the DLL search script for creating the Windows
installer, which made the "packaging-win*-native" jobs in particular
run from over 2 hours in some cases to about 10 minutes. So it's a
big gain for the creation wait for the Windows installer.
- GEGL minimum required version bumped to 0.4.36.
API:
- Vala bindings gimp-3.vapi and gimp-ui-3.vapi were renamed to
gimp-3.0.vapi and gimp-ui-3.0.vapi respectively in the autotools
build (now consistent with meson).
- Changes in libgimp:
* GimpStringArray type was removed in favor of GStrv. Various libgimp
API were updated to use GStrv, and relevant plug-in procedures with
GStrv arguments or return values were updated as well.
* New functions:
+ gimp_context_are_dynamics_enabled()
+ gimp_context_enable_dynamics().
+ gimp_item_get_lock_visibility()
+ gimp_item_set_lock_visibility()
+ gimp_pdb_run_procedure_config()
* Removed functions:
+ gimp_item_get_linked()
+ gimp_item_set_linked()
- Changes in libgimpui:
* New widgets:
+ GimpLabelColor (now used by default for GimpRGB properties in
GimpProcedureDialog)
+ GimpLabelEntry (now used by default for string properties in
GimpProcedureDialog)
+ GimpSpinScale (formerly a core-only widget, e.g. used by the
"Opacity" slider on the Layers dockable, moved to libgimpui to be
usable by plug-ins)
* New functions:
+ gimp_color_area_enable_drag()
+ gimp_event_triggers_context_menu(): alternative to
gdk_event_triggers_context_menu() with the additional ability of
using button release events as contextual menu triggering
(instead of press events), which might be prefered in some
cases. Other than this, it uses exactly the same conditions as
its GDK counterpart.
+ gimp_procedure_dialog_get_spin_scale()
+ gimp_prop_label_color_new().
+ gimp_prop_label_entry_new()
+ gimp_prop_spin_scale_new()
+ gimp_prop_widget_set_factor()
* Improved functions:
+ gimp_procedure_dialog_get_widget() can now generate widgets of
type GimpSpinScale (for int/double properties) and GimpLabelColor
or GimpColorButton (for GimpRGB properties).
+ gimp_procedure_dialog_get_color_widget() now only return
GimpLabelColor widgets (editable or not).
Documentation:
- API documentation is now built with `gi-docgen` instead of
`gtk-doc`. The syntax for in-comment documentation is slightly
changed.
- Important rework of the developer documentation has started in
devel-docs/.
Translations:
- 20 translations were updated: Basque, British English, Catalan,
Chinese (China), Danish, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Kabyle,
Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Slovenian,
Spanish, Swedish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese.
Overview of Changes from GIMP 2.99.6 to GIMP 2.99.8
===================================================
Core:
- Selection display implementation now updated to more modern display
server logics when drawing to display buffer. This fixes selection
drawing in Wayland and macOS Big Sur.
- "Create a New Image" default action is "OK" so that hitting Enter in
text/number fields is equivalent to clicking OK.
- Paint tool core code can now receive multiple drawables as input
though it is disabled by default, unless a tool calls
gimp_paint_tool_enable_multi_paint() in its init() method. This is
only used in source tools so far.
- Clicking anywhere on toolbox empty space (dead areas between
buttons) or on Wilber's drop area, as well as on the toolbox buttons
themselves, actively focuses the canvas (similarly to the `Esc`
shortcut).
- Config folder migration for GIMP 3 with initial implementation.
- Action "view-rotate-reset" renamed to "view-reset" (resets both
flipping and rotate). New "view-rotate-reset" and "view-flip-reset"
for resetting rotation and flipping respectively.
- New GimpEarlyRc class replacing GimpLangRc for very early config
parsing (it used to be for language setting, now also for the
pointer input API choice on Windows).
- All g_memdup() ported to g_memdup2() thanks to GLib version bump.
- Various leaks and other bugs fixed, notably with several static
analyzer results
- Add metadata preference for saving thumbnail by default: saving a
thumbnail is closely related to the other metadata preferences,
but so far this was the only one that didn't have a preference for a
default user value. A new settings in the "Image Import & Export"
section of the Preferences allows to select whether thumbnail saving
should be enabled by default or not.
- Preferences now allows to select the input device API on Windows
(Wintab or Windows Ink), as Windows Pointer Input Stack (Windows
Ink) support was added recently in GTK3.
Tools:
- Clone, Heal and Perspective clone now work on multiple selected
layers. There are 2 new modes:
* When cloning while multiple drawables are being selected, each
drawable clones from itself to itself, i.e. every drawable is both
its source and target.
* When sourcing from multiple drawables then cloning into a single
drawable, the source is the composited image. This is similar to
"Sample Merged", except limited to a list of drawables.
User Interface:
- Layout of the Canvas Size dialog re-designed a bit more horizontally
after the template selector feature made it too high.
- Thumbnail icon feature was dropped: when images were opened, the
application icon used to be a composition of the active image and
the application icon (Wilber). This was confusing, hard to
distinguish and working on less and less platforms because of recent
OS and desktop rules or logics changes.
API:
- New gimp_display_present() function to present a specific display at
the top of the image display stack.
- New gimp_procedure_dialog_fill_expander() to create a GtkExpander in
procedure dialogs.
- All widgets within a same container in a GimpProcedureDialog are
added to their own GtkSizeGroup.
- New function gimp_export_thumbnail() to query the user settings (as
set in Preferences) on whether or not a file plug-in should export
the image thumbnail.
Plug-ins:
- PSD now supports bigger-than-4GiB files. File support was ported to
GIO API with 64-bit offsets, hence allowing loading correctly very
big files.
- PSD now supports loading up to 99 channels (specs say that 56 is the
max but some sample PSD files have more channels).
- PSB file format is now supported for loading.
- Scriptfu now handles GFile and GimpObjectArray types.
- 16-bit SGI images now supported (until now, they were loaded as
8-bit).
- file-webp ported to GimpSaveProcedureDialog.
- New JPEG XL plug-in (loading and exporting).
- Various cleaning replacing g_file_get_path() with g_file_peek_path()
Translations:
- New Vietnamese, Lithuanian and Portuguese translations for the
installer.
Build:
- Windows installer scripts updated to all supported languages.
- New "windows-installer-langs" unit test to detect discrepancies of
langs listed in build system, installer and gettext files.
- New CI jobs for Windows native builds with MSYS2.
- Less critical CI jobs (meson/clang build and cppcheck static
analysis) moved to a scheduled run for resource saving, and 32-bit
cross-built Windows job now only runnable manually.
- Windows installer now built as a CI job. The installer is not
signed. The installer creation happens on tags for releases and at
regular scheduled intervals for tests.
- Improved tag handling in the CI for transparent release process.
- New flatpak job (on scheduled interval) published on GNOME Nightly
repository.
- Windows installer and test flatpak (to download, no repository) can
now be built by a merge request CI when the labels "5. Windows
Installer" and/or "5. Flatpak package" are respectively set in the
MR labels.
- Scalable GIMP application icon is installed too.
- Generate SHA* checksums for CI-generated Windows installers.
- New `CODING_STYLE.md` document in repository for our coding style
rules.
- Configure: --enable-check-update now has an "auto" value.
Meson: -Dcheck-update is now a yes|no|platform-default combo.
The auto/platform-default value defaults to "yes" on Windows and
macOS and "no" on other platforms.
- GLib dependency's minimum required version bumped to 2.68.0.
- GEGL minimum required version bumped to 0.4.32.
- Flatpak nightly build now uses the new "fallback-x11" permission
instead of "x11" to prevent unnecessary X11 access while in Wayland.
- Fixes to codebase making GIMP 2.99 finally building and running on
macOS.
- Our flatpak manifests now use the flatpak-external-data-checker tool
with the Anitya backend allowing to monitor our dependencies and
ensure they are always up-to-date. All dependencies have been
updated accordingly.
- Our desktop file now lists a `StartupWMClass` tag to better
associate running GIMP windows with the application icon (and
possibly other metadata).
Overview of Changes from GIMP 2.99.4 to GIMP 2.99.6
===================================================
Core:
- Various fixes for Wayland support.
- Canvas Size dialog now displays a template selector to simply
resize the canvas to a known template. When the image's and
template's pixel density don't match, a choice will be proposed to
set the image's PPI to the template's one or to scale the template's
pixel size with the image's pixel density.
- Off-canvas guides are now allowed. Guides are not deleted anymore
when dropped off-canvas, but when dropped off-viewport.
- Pinch gesture is now possible on canvas for zooming in/out (works on
Wayland, not on X11; untested yet on *BSD, macOS, Windows and
others).
- GimpAction core class now stores a reason for explaining being
disabled. This can be used later for giving better hints on why some
effects or plug-ins are not usable in some situations. We already
had this feature, but by tweaking the action's tooltip, which
prevented this to have proper styling on GUIs and disrupted action
search (as the reason text was searched, hence may return actions it
should not).
- Copy|Cut-Paste could already operate on multiple layers, by merging
the result into a single layer. It will still do this when a
selection exists, yet will paste layers as-is otherwise. This makes
an alternative way to move layers, which is sometimes easier than
drag'n dropping (especially between separate images).
Tools:
- Paint Select tool got various improvements:
* apply a threshold on the image mask before triggering the
automatic expansion to simplify mask handling in the gegl
paint-select operation.
* enable viewport-based local selection.
- GEGL Operation tool is now moved into Filters > Generic menu because
it behaves more like a generic filter conceptually. As other
filters, the GEGL Operation action is now only active when there are
opened images.
API:
- The generate "Metadata" frame layout in a GimpSaveProcedureDialog
has been improved to always show the same number of columns to avoid
ugly layout with options on 3 columns, then 2 columns on the next
line (for instance).
- The "Reset" button in GimpProcedureDialog shows a down arrow to show
this is actually a button menu.
- "Save|Load Defaults" in GimpProcedureDialog are renamed as "Save
Settings" and "Load Saved Settings". The term "defaults" was not
very clear and could be confused with "factory defaults". Moreover
tooltips were added and the "Load Defaults" button is now only
sensitive if "Save Defaults" buttion has been hit at least once.
- Annotations improved.
- Drop g_object_notify() in favor of g_object_notify_by_pspec() in
various implementations to avoid a slight performance hit because of
a global lock.
- New function gimp_parasite_get_data() replacing gimp_parasite_data()
and gimp_parasite_data_size() in a GObject Introspection friendly
way.
- gimp_procedure_dialog_new() now allows a NULL title if a menu label
was set on the GimpProcedure with gimp_procedure_set_menu_label().
- gimp_progress_update() improved: do not update more than 20 times
per second and do not warn on stderr when too many progression steps
are outputted. Indeed we should not place the burden of deciding
whether there are too much or not enough progression updates on
plug-in developers. On the opposite, they should be encouraged to
update the progression as often as possible while libgimp will
handle the decision on whether it actually ignores the progression
step or not. This makes easier plug-in development and good
progression feedback of long process.
- GimpInt16Array was removed: it was used neither by GIMP core nor any
core plug-ins. If third-party plug-ins really need this type, they
may easily reintroduce it through GimpUint8Array (array of bytes) or
GimpInt32Array (using only a subrange).
- New function gimp_image_take_selected_layers() similar to
gimp_image_set_selected_layers() except that it takes a GList
(instead of a C array) and it takes ownership of the list pointer.
- New functions: gimp_procedure_set_sensitivity_mask() and
gimp_procedure_get_sensitivity_mask() for plug-ins to advertize when
a procedure should be sensitive (in particular relatively to
multi-drawable selection).
- GimpImageProcedure's run() functions now have an array of drawables
as argument (instead of a single drawable), to be consistent with
multi-drawable selection ability.
- New gimp_plug_in_error_quark() as a generic GQuark/GError domain for
plug-ins.
- Several functions were renamed to be consistent with our naming
scheme:
* s/gimp_parasite_name/gimp_parasite_get_name/
* s/gimp_parasite_flags/gimp_parasite_get_flags/
* s/gimp_image_base_type/gimp_image_get_base_type/
* s/gimp_image_width/gimp_image_get_width/
* s/gimp_image_height/gimp_image_get_height/
* s/gimp_drawable_bpp/gimp_drawable_get_bpp/
* s/gimp_drawable_width/gimp_drawable_get_width/
* s/gimp_drawable_height/gimp_drawable_get_height/
* s/gimp_drawable_offsets/gimp_drawable_get_offsets/
- gimp_parasite_data() and gimp_parasite_data_size() are replaced by
gimp_parasite_get_data() which is introspection friendly.
- libgimpconfig: GimpParasite can now be serialized. This is useful
when using a GimpParasite procedure argument, whose random contents
(possibly binary) can be stored across sessions.
- Move public classes to G_DECLARE_DERIVABLE_TYPE and
G_DECLARE_FINAL_TYPE in order not to expose useless variables to
plug-in developers.
- New function gimp_procedure_dialog_set_sensitive() sets
GimpProcedureDialog's widget sensitive value or binding.
- PDB procedure 'plug-in-autocrop-layer' multi-layer aware.
- GimpProcedureDialog now handles GimpRGB arguments.
Plug-ins:
- We dropped the dialog for the Freedesktop portal implementation of
the screenshot plug-in. Basically the Freedesktop portal provides
its own GUI with most options, so also showing ours is redundant.
Just directly call the portal and wait for the image in return.
- Color profile and comment is saved on each layer of a TIFF file to
prevent any ambiguity as TIFF allows its layers to have different
profiles.
- On PNG import, create an ICC profile out of the gAMA and/or cHRM
chunks, if any of them are present, if no color profile is set and
if the sRGB chunk is not present. This happens for RGB images as
well as grayscale images (creating respectively a RGB or grayscale
color profile).
- Improve PNG export in no-profile case with gAMA and cHRM chunks
(additionally to the sRGB chunk) according to PNG spec
recommendations. Moreover the "gamma" option has now been removed
because we just have proper core support of this metadata through
ICC profile creation now, which is just more powerful.
- "gamma" option for PNG export was removed (from GUI and
file-png-load PDB API) because it is now redundant as we have proper
support for this metadata.
- Various fixes and improvements to OpenRaster image support.
- PDF export now has progression.
- PSD import/export got multi-layer selection support.
- Qbist:
* make the applied pattern a bit more prominent by adding a
label about the center pattern of the 9x9 grid (which is the
selected one meant to be applied).
* last used values now stored with the new API, hence surviving
across sessions.
- benchmark-foreground-extract.py moved to gimp-data-extras.
- Various plug-ins now work with multiple selected drawables when
relevant.
Devel docs:
- Python 3 and Javascript API documentation are now generated inside
the build directory devel-docs/g-ir-docs/html/ (not installed right
now) if you configure the build with option --enable-g-ir-doc
(alternative for the meson build: -Dg-ir-doc=true but the docs ends
up incomplete so autotools build is advised, cf. #6362).
Translations:
- New Hebrew translation for the installer.
Build:
- Bumping minimum GEGL to version 0.4.30.
Overview of Changes from GIMP 2.99.2 to GIMP 2.99.4
===================================================
Core:
- Action search now always show all actions, even inactive ones. In
order not to clutter the results, inactive ones are shown after
active results (following the same match quality level).
Consequently the "Show unavailable actions" checkbox has been
removed from the `Preferences > Help System` dialog.
- Improve sample text logics for CJK fonts, showing different
sample characters for Korean and Japanese, making detection
at-a-glance of such fonts easier.
- With "Ask what to do" color profile policy, profile conversion at
image loading is not proposed anymore when the image's profile is
the preferred profile set in Preferences for the current image type
(currently it would only be discarded if the image's profile was the
built-in profile, now GIMP accounts for both cases).
- When file loading plug-ins are run, the file chooser dialog is now
hidden until the plug-in returns.
- GIMP tries to keep error dialogs above to raise awareness when they
arrive (not discovered later under other dialogs).
User Interface:
- GimpSpinScale widget improvements:
* The widget will grab focus when starting to edit the entry, and
in particular the current number will be fully selected (because
often we want to just type down a completely different number
accurately).
* Also when giving focus to the entry with middle click (from
anywhere inside the widget), the scale value doesn't change in the
same time anymore.
* Finally we can now target-click accurately the entry current value
to edit the entry (again, without changing the value and selecting
existing number fully) with the main button (usually left button).
Even though middle click is simpler because we don't have to be
accurate (we can middle-click anywhere in the spin scale widget),
it is hardly discoverable, whereas clicking a number entry which
is meant to be editable is the most common GUI interaction
expectation.
* To help feature discoverability, when hovering the widget, the
cursor will change and show a "grab" cursor when a click would
start an absolute edit (the cursor changes to "grabbing" when
actually clicking and dragging the scale) or a "text" cursor when
a click would focus the number entry. When Shift key is being
hold, the cursor is the one for the relative edit, wherever the
position over the widget. This should make discovering possible
interactions with the widget a lot easier.
- Various improvements in the Layers dockable (and similar tree view
widgets):
* The bigger thumbnail popup on long click (e.g. on a layer or mask
thumbnail) does not pop out when any modifier is hold (such as
Shift/Ctrl for multi-selection or any other modifier used for
alternative actions).
* Alternative actions which were available with modifier-clicks on
layer or mask thumbnails have been moved to an Alt+ modifier when
necessary, in order to not clash with multi-layer selection
interaction. In particular:
+ Ctrl-click on a mask to enable/disable it now moved to
Alt-Ctrl-click.
* The Shift+click and Ctrl+click actions on a layer thumbnail to add
and remove respectively a layer mask have been removed because the
much older feature for "Alpha to Selection" already use all the
Alt+ modifier combinations.
* The alternative Alt+ actions now only operate on the clicked layer
and not on the selection unlike the corresponding actions
(available through buttons, actions and menus). Also they do not
change the selection. So you can Alt+click a layer for "Alpha to
Selection", same as you can Alt+click a mask for showing it
without triggering a selection change. This allows these
alternative actions to not be redundant of the equivalent actions
but complementary with a slightly different targeting behavior.
* The various interactions with modifiers now catch the exact
modifier combination they require, hence avoiding interaction
cases running several actions (e.g. Alt-Ctrl on a layer thumbnail
removes the clicked layer's alpha channel from the selection
without modifying the selected layer while Ctrl only would modify
the selection).
Tools:
- New Paint Select tool in the playground. This is a tool prototype
which would hopefully end up as a quick binary selection tool.
- The new default dynamics is: "Pressure Size". This doesn't change
anything for common input devices (mouses, touchpad) yet would allow
tablet devices to directly show that pressure input is working on
first use. Until now, people would have the impression that tablets
are not working (even though GIMP 3 will have hotplug so it is
actually working from scratch) just because "Dynamics Off" was the
default.
Input Devices:
- Various improvements to the Input Devices editor:
* Do not show virtual devices and XTEST API (Linux/X11) device in
the Input Devices editor as they are useless from a configuration
standpoint.
* Only show the axes returned by GDK instead of the whole
list of possible axes, which made no sense.
* Show better names for axes, as returned by GDK, for instance a X
axis becomes often "Abs X" on a graphics tablet and "Rel X" on a
mouse or other devices made to work relatively.
* Don't show an empty list for devices with no axes, just don't show
the list widget at all.
* For each device, select by default the first axis with curve
ability, if any, (i.e. the Pressure axis if the device has one) in
order to make the dialog directly more useful and usable.
- Default tool have been set on different device sources:
* Pen devices (tablet styluses main input) now default to the
paintbrush tool.
* Eraser devices (tablet styluses back input) still defaults to
eraser tool.
* Touch screen (finger) defaults to Smudge tool.
* All other devices defaults to paintbrush (this was already the
case, but was broken for as long as I remember, now it should work
properly).
API:
- GimpFileEntry public variables were made private and a new function
has been added: gimp_file_entry_get_entry().
- New GimpScaleEntry and GimpColorScaleEntry widget classes and new
relevant API for these objects, replacing the former functions
creating various widgets and attaching them to a GtkGrid. This makes
for easier to use and less constrained GUI functions (with a lot
less arguments, as we try now to smartly generate appropriate
defaults for many options; gimp_scale_entry_new() in particular went
down from 17 arguments to 5), also better introspectability for
bindings, and finally it will be useful for automatic dialog
generation for plug-ins.
- New GimpLabeled class and subclasses: GimpLabelSpin,
GimpLabelIntWidget.
- Several new functions for GimpProcedureDialog for automatic dialog
generation based on input arguments. Though not mandatory, the
various functions allow to organize better the widgets.
- The GimpProcedureDialog class will now check that mnemonics are
present on every option, and also that there is no duplicate
mnemonics. It will print messages on stderr if any of these test
fails (so that it won't bother users but developers and translators
should be able to get feedback about missing/duplicate mnemonics).
- GimpSaveProcedure now has generic metadata support (with an API so
that an export procedure can declare whether it supports given
metadata types or contents).
Combined with a new subclass GimpSaveProcedureDialog (child of
GimpProcedureDialog), this ensures that:
* If a format supports a given metadata, they will always have an
auxiliary argument with the same name across plug-ins.
* The label and tooltips will also be always the same in the GUI.
* Order of metadata widgets will also stay consistent.
* The widgets will work the same (no more "Comment" text view
missing in one plug-in but present in another, or with an entry
here, and a text view there, and so on).
* The metadata frame will show an "(edit)" link which will run the
"plug-in-metadata-editor" plug-in. The eventual goal is to move
some generic logics to the metadata editor (when it makes sense)
and to raise awareness for metadata edition and viewing abilities.
This is still a work-in-progress which requires much more
improvements in said abilities.
- New gimp_get_num_processors() function for plug-ins to be able to
set their own multi-threading operations as configured in
Preferences.
Plug-ins:
- file-fli, file-tiff, file-jpeg and file-png updated to new dialog
generation API. In the most complicated case (file-jpeg), this
shaved 600 lines out of the plug-in code.
- file-heif:
- now uses gimp_get_num_processors() instead of
g_get_num_processors() (allowing to bypass system thread info).
- Realtime parameter is set for AOM encoder when Fast encoding
speed is selected by user.
- Ability to set pixel format (YUV444, RGB) is enabled
for >= libheif 1.10 to avoid issues in older versions.
- file-jp2 is now able to decode JPEG2000 files faster with
multi-threading, using the thread number settings returned by
gimp_get_num_processors().
- Improved plug-in debugging helper infrastructure: GIMP_PLUGIN_DEBUG
has a new `fatal-criticals` option and better defaults. Developer
documentation got some rewriting and debugging code benefited from
refactorization.
- py-slice.py moved to gimp-data-extras.
Installer:
- Various updates to adapt to the GIMP 2.99/3 build.
- Lua made optional.
Devel docs:
- Documentation to port GIMP 2.10 plug-ins to GIMP 3.0 has been
started in `devel-docs/GIMP3-plug-in-porting-guide/`. It is also
visible directly on out Gitlab instance with visual styling:
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/tree/master/devel-docs/GIMP3-plug-in-porting-guide
Build:
- Bumping minimum harfbuzz version to 1.0.5 for hb_ft_font_set_funcs().
- Bumping minimum pango version to 1.44.0 for pango_font_has_char().
- Bumping minimum GEGL to version 0.4.28.
Overview of Changes from GIMP 2.10.x to GIMP 2.99.2
===================================================
Core:
- Improved "space invasion".
- New extension format support (.gex a.k.a. GIMP Extension) which is
an archive containing various supported data. So far, it can
package: brushes, MyPaint brushes, dynamics, patterns, gradients,
palettes, tool presets, plug-ins, splash images and themes.
- New extension manager allowing to enable, disable or uninstall
installed extensions, with a dialog available in `Edit > Manage
Extensions`.
- Multi selection of layers now possible. Various tools and features
are now multi-selection aware.
- XCF format bumped to version 14 with awareness of multiple layer
selection.
- All code is year-2038-safe with deprecated time API replaced.
- "Alpha to Selection" various actions warn when the result selection
is empty.
- Color Profile Policy (import) now exposes a "Convert to Preferred
Profile" (fourth) choice and the import dialog default "Convert"
action will convert the image to the preferred profile (if any was
set, otherwise it falls back to the built-in profile). Converting to
the built-in profile will be still available as secondary action.
- A new "Metadata Rotation Policy" is now exposed in the Preferences
dialog, next to the "Color Profile Policy" (in page `Preferences >
Image Import & Export`) with 3 options: "Ask what to do", "Discard
metadata without rotating" and "Rotate the image then discard
metadata".
This policy used to be handled API-size, with a dialog generated by
libgimpui gimp_image_metadata_load_finish(), and saved in a global
parasite. The whole logics and GUI has been moved as core logics,
similar to the "Color Profile Policy".
User Interface:
- Whole interface ported to GTK+3:
* Proper HiDPI support, which will follow the system's scale factor
for all widgets. This is a core toolkit support, unlike the basic
better-than-nothing hacks from GIMP 2.10.x.
* GTK+3 CSS-like support. All themes for former versions are
therefore not working anymore.
* GTK+3 themes have the concept of "dark variant", so a same theme
may propose both a light and a dark versions. Preference for dark
variants can now be checked in `Preferences > Themes > Use dark
theme variant if available` checkbox, allowing for instance to use
your system theme in its light variant everywhere except in GIMP.
This option is checked by default as graphics software are often
preferred in dark modes.
* Symbolic icon themes are now recolored automatically according to
the theme colors (no theme and icon theme tweaking anymore to end
up with dark on dark or light on light interfaces), except for
color elements whose SVG style is marked as "!important".
* Native Wayland support.
* Various dialogs now use Client-Side decorations and modern GTK+
widgets are being used when relevant (e.g. GtkSwitch which gives a
better feeling of a general "ON/OFF state").
* Progressive/smooth scroll actions (e.g. ctrl+scroll for zooming)
are now possible.
- Image display rendered faster with a render cache that keeps the
result of scaling, color management, display filters and shell mask
(for tools like fuzzy select).
- Shift-click on layer GimpContainerTreeView (typically the Layers
dockable) allows to expand/collapse all item groups but the clicked
one.
- Compact GimpSpinScale is now the only available version.
- Scalable symbolic icons "switch-on", "switch-off" (from GTK
repository) and "software-update-available" (from Adwaita
repository) are now bundled with GIMP in a "hicolor" overlay so that
they are available even if missing from the custom theme.
Devices:
- Device hotplug supported (thanks to GTK+3). In particular:
* you don't need to have your tablets and other devices plugged
before you start GIMP anymore;
* enabling your devices in the "Configure Input Devices" dialog is
not needed anymore. Tablets will work out-of-the box;
* you can safely unplug and replug the same or other input devices
while GIMP is running.
- "Input Devices" dialog improved:
* "Save" and "Close" buttons replaced by "OK" (save and exit),
"Cancel" (reset and exit) and "Reset" (reset to previous settings
but keep the dialog open).
* "Keys" list has been discontinued. The "key" concept is
associated to "keyboard" devices (a tablet being a "pointing
device" with buttons, not keys) so this list was actually useless
and only confusing.
Plug-ins:
- Major rewrite of the API (see below). So GIMP 2.10.x plug-ins and
below must be ported to the new API.
- Every introspected binding which we test comes with a "Goat
Exercise", which is a demo plug-in popping a dialog and showing its
own source code. It processes a simple "gegl:invert" operation on a
drawable. All "Goat Exercises" must do the same thing in the same
way, simply in their respective languages, as documentation/example
code for a language binding.
- The Goat Exercise plug-ins are themselves installed as a GIMP
Extension, as a demo for extension creation.
- Plug-ins must be installed in their own subdirectory in
`$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/GIMP/2.99/plug-ins/`, thus preventing data mess
(with plug-ins coming with data and installing it all in the root
plug-ins/ directory) and DLL hell. The main plug-in executable must
be named the same as the directory (possibly with an added
extension).
E.g.: `plug-ins/my-cool-plug-in/my-cool-plug-in.py`
- HEIF export allows selecting color subsampling/pixel format (YUV444,
YUV420, RGB) and encoder speed (Slow, Balanced, Fast).
Lossless option delivers visually lossless output.
- New "file-heif-av1-load" procedure separate from "file-heif-load"
for AVIF only.
- shadow_bevel.py, sphere.py, whirlpinch.py and clothify.py moved to
gimp-data-extras.
API:
- `GimpPDB` is now a class to represent the PDB communication channel
with GIMP. It is a singleton which exist exactly once per running
plug-in, hence it is not meant to be manually instantiated and can
only be returned by gimp_get_pdb(). It is mostly used to look up
procedures declared by other plug-ins or by GIMP core, check if a
given procedure exist and run the procedures.
- `GimpPlugIn` is a class which every plug-in should now subclass as a
way to create their plug-in, and override at least the methods
query_procedures() and create_procedure(). Two other methods
(init_procedures() and quit()) can be optionally overridden.
The new subclass must be declared to gimp by calling gimp_main() to
make it available to the core (PDB procedure, menu items, etc.).
A plug-in can obtain its own GimpPlugIn instance with
gimp_get_plug_in(). This is a singleton object which belongs to
libgimp.
- Plug-In procedures are now represented by a class `GimpProcedure`.
* The subclass `GimpFileProcedure` handles file-related procedures,
and its own subclasses `GimpLoadProcedure` and `GimpSaveProcedure`
handle load/export procedures (file format support).
* The subclass `GimpThumbnailProcedure` for procedures run during
the lifetime of the GIMP session each time a plug-in thumbnail
procedure is called.
* The subclass `GimpImageProcedure` handles `GimpImage`-related
procedures, i.e. any procedure which want to work on the opened
image (GIMP core will pass through the active image and selected
drawables to the plug-in procedure).
* Objects of the subclass `GimpPDBProcedure` are not meant to be
created or freed by plug-ins, they represent any `GimpProcedure`
and are returned by `gimp_pdb_lookup_procedure()` by looking it up
by name on the singleton `GimpPDB` object.
- `GimpProcedureConfig` is the base class to represent the arguments
when running a `GimpProcedure`. It implements the `GimpConfig`
interface and will provide proper management of saved settings
(including the last used values) and generated GUI using
prop_widgets to plug-ins. This is still a work-in-progress.
Currently `GimpProcedure` run function is called with a
`GimpValueArray` whose values can be transferred into a
`GimpProcedureConfig` by calling `gimp_procedure_config_begin_run()`
or `gimp_procedure_config_begin_export()`.
- `GimpDisplay` is now a class of its own.
- `GimpImage` is now a class to represent an opened image.
- `GimpItem` is now a class to represent various `GimpImage` items.
* `GimpVectors` subclass represents an image path.
* `GimpDrawable` subclass represents drawable object but is a
simili-abstract class as it won't be a finale object class, which
can be so far either a:
+ `GimpLayer` represents image layers.
+ `GimpChannel` represents a `GimpImage` channel which is
typically in GIMP a named channel which can be added into a
`GimpImage` channel stack (the "Channels" dockable in the GUI)
with `gimp_image_insert_channel()`. This class is not really
used to represent a color space component though this is
conceptually the same thing (so maybe some day) and named
channel can actually be created from an image color component
with `gimp_channel_new_from_component()`.
Some other specific usages have their own subclasses:
- `GimpLayerMask` subclass is used for a `GimpLayer` mask.
- `GimpSelection` subclass is used for a `GimpImage` selection.
- GimpImage, GimpItem and GimpDisplay (and their various subclasses)
represent objects which can be passed through the PDB. They are
managed by libgimp and should not be freed by plug-ins.
- The PDB-passing classes still have IDs which can be obtained with
gimp_image_get_id(), gimp_item_get_id() and gimp_display_get_id()
respectively. Conversely you can get back the object with
gimp_image_get_by_id(), gimp_item_get_by_id() and
gimp_display_get_by_id().
Specific variants exist to get back an item object from its ID, such
as gimp_layer_get_by_id(), which do additional class verification
(other than this, they are similar to gimp_item_get_by_id()).
**NOTE**: since objects are managed by libgimp, you are ensured that
a `*_get_by_id()` call returns you exactly the same object you had
previously for a given object. Consequently you can do pointer
comparison of objects to compare images, items or displays during a
given run. This will work because objects are unique (these are not
several object copies representing the same remote object).
- Type validation function which used to work on IDs now work directly
with object arguments while new function with added `*_id*` have
been created to validate from an object ID instead, GIMP 2.10-style.
To verify if an ID exist:
* gimp_image_is_valid() / gimp_image_id_is_valid()
* gimp_item_is_valid() / gimp_item_id_is_valid()
* gimp_display_is_valid() / gimp_display_id_is_valid()
To check if GimpItem are from specific subclasses:
* gimp_item_is_drawable() / gimp_item_id_is_drawable()
* gimp_item_is_layer() / gimp_item_id_is_layer()
* gimp_item_is_text_layer() / gimp_item_id_is_text_layer()
* gimp_item_is_channel() / gimp_item_id_is_channel()
* gimp_item_is_layer_mask() / gimp_item_id_is_layer_mask()
* gimp_item_is_selection() / gimp_item_id_is_selection()
* gimp_item_is_vectors() / gimp_item_id_is_vectors()
**NOTE**: since these are GObject classes, you can also use the
GObject style macros such as GIMP_IS_LAYER(). Yet these macros do
not do any ID verification (which is not a problem anyway in most
cases as you got the object from API calls) and will not exist in
bindings.
**IMPORTANT**: using IDs is mostly for internal usage and actually
there are very few reasons to ever need to get an object ID from a
plug-in. Usually you should rather just work only with the unique
object pointers returned by the API.
- The whole API has been updated to use objects instead of object IDs
when relevant. For instance all existing libgimp functions from 2.10
which were called on an image ID are now called on a GimpImage
object instead.
- All file paths procedure parameters are now handled by GIO's `GFile`
which simplify various file handling issues (path formats, encoding,
etc.) and brings new features (remote access, secure protocol
support, etc.). We also got rid of the "filename" vs "raw_filename"
differentiation in parameters. Hence all libgimp* functions with
these parameters have been updated as well.
- gimp_image_metadata_load_finish() is now fully GUI/GTK-code free.
The first consequence is that it is not in libgimpui anymore, but in
libgimp, as it should. The second consequence is that the boolean
`interactive` argument has been removed. Now all image rotation
logics (the part which needed a GUI) has been moved into core and
will be automatically run when normally loading images from GIMP's
interface, similarly as to how color profiles was already handled.
- 2 new libgimp functions: gimp_image_policy_rotate() and
gimp_image_policy_color_profile() are now available to explicitly
call the Preferences-set policy on an image. This may result in a
dialog being presented to the user if `interactive` is TRUE and
settings is "Ask what to do".
It is unnecessary to call these functions when developing a new
GimpLoadProcedure because the core will automatically do the right
thing and call these on normal image loading workflow.
Instead if a plug-in calls such GimpLoadProcedure through the PDB,
no such functions will be run automatically. It is up to the plug-in
to decide what to do (no conversion, mandatory conversion, or using
user settings, possibly with a dialog to decide, hence calling these
functions explicitly).
- New function gimp_export_comment() to query the user settings (as
set in Preferences) on whether or not a file plug-in should export
the image's comment.
- Several functions which are returning C-array of objects with a size
output argument now also have a GList counterpart (not as
replacement, but as additional API):
* gimp_get_images() -> gimp_list_images()
* gimp_image_get_layers() -> gimp_image_list_layers()
* gimp_image_get_selected_layers() -> gimp_image_list_selected_layers()
* gimp_image_get_channels() -> gimp_image_list_channels()
* gimp_image_get_vectors() -> gimp_image_list_vectors()
* gimp_item_get_children() -> gimp_item_list_children()
- New function gimp_vectors_stroke_reverse() to reverse a specified
stroke in a given GimpVectors.
- In GIMP 2.10, functions gimp_drawable_preview_get_drawable() and
gimp_zoom_preview_get_drawable() got deprecated in favor of
respectively gimp_drawable_preview_get_drawable_id() and
gimp_zoom_preview_get_drawable_id(). The original names have been
reinstated and now returns a GimpDrawable object, whereas the newer
functions got removed.
Similarly gimp_zoom_preview_new_from_drawable_id() and
gimp_drawable_preview_new_from_drawable_id() are replaced by
respectively gimp_zoom_preview_new_from_drawable() and
gimp_drawable_preview_new_from_drawable().
- Deprecated functions in GIMP 2.10.x have been removed. To get a list
of these function, this file should hopefully map most of them to a
replacement equivalent:
devel-docs/GIMP3-plug-in-porting-guide/removed_functions.md
- gimp_spin_button_new() had some weird compatibility macro to expand
to a newer or older signature depending on the number of arguments.
Now only the newer signature with 3 arguments is available.
- Properties removed from custom widgets:
* GimpAspectPreview, GimpDrawablePreview and GimpZoomPreview had a
deprecated "drawable" property in favor of "drawable-id" property.
The "drawable" property got reinstated (and the "drawable-id"
removed) and obviously now stores a GimpDrawable object rather
than an integer.
* The property "stock-id" was removed from GimpHintBox and
GimpCellRendererToggle. Use "icon-name" instead.
- Note: there are likely more API changes, unfortunately we haven't
kept the NEWS file up-to-start from scratch. The best is to look at
the API generated documentation.
- The full API is GObject Introspected into 2 modules: Gimp and
GimpUi. This means plug-ins can be written in various non-C
languages. So far the following languages have been tested and work
well: Python 3, Lua, Javascript and Vala.
(Note: Python 2 is also working, but considering that this language
is end-of-life since 2020, we don't really care).
- All pygimp specific Python API does not exist anymore. Python will
use the same API as C plug-ins, introspected through GObject
Introspection.
Documentation:
- `devel-docs/xcf.txt` updated to handle XCF 14.
Build:
- New meson build system. Still deemed "experimental" for the time
being. Packagers are recommended to continue using the autotools
build system in order to avoid build system-specific bugs.
- Continuous integration in Gitlab with:
- an autotools build with GCC on a Debian/testing runner
- an autotools distcheck build on a Debian/testing runner
- a meson build with GCC on a Debian/testing runner
- a meson build with Clang on a Debian/testing runner
- a meson cross-build with Mingw-w64 for Windows 32-bit
- a meson cross-build with Mingw-w64 for Windows 64-bit
- static code analysis with cppcheck
- a source tarball distribution job (tar.bz2 and tar.xz)
- a ready-to-run Windows 64-bit test archive
- a ready-to-run Windows 32-bit test archive
Known blocker issues:
- GTK+3 port is functional but not complete as some deprecated APIs
are still being used.
- Space invasion is still a work-in-progress.
- Plug-ins API update is still a work-in-progress.
- GIMP extensions are still a work-in-progress.
- Multiple layer selection is still work-in-progress. Some issues are
expected, and possibly even some crashes in code paths which were
not updated yet.
- No custom theme yet, in particular we want a neutral gray theme with
light/dark variants, and a middle-gray theme too.
- We probably want to revive a "Small" theme as well with smaller
icons (useful on smaller displays, or mid-high density displays or
simply depending on tastes).
- Various blocking bugs happen on Wayland only.