The GNU Image Manipulation Program Version 2.4
----------------------------------------------

This is a release candidate for GIMP 2.4, the new stable version of
GIMP. Please realize that this is not yet the 2.4.0 release. This
release candidate should be feature complete and pretty close to what
you will get with 2.4.0. But there might still be bugs and even some
minor changes pending in some places. If you need to get work done,
please stick to the stable version, GIMP 2.2 until GIMP 2.4 is
released.

GIMP 2.4 replaces earlier GIMP 2.x versions. It is advised that you
uninstall them before installing GIMP 2.4. If you want to keep your
older GIMP 2.x installation in parallel to GIMP 2.4, you have to
choose a separate prefix which is not in your default library search
path. Otherwise your GIMP 2.2 or GIMP 2.0 installation will start to
use the new libraries. You have been warned.

If you think you found a bug in this version, please make sure that it
hasn't been reported earlier and that it is not just new stuff that is
still being worked on and obviously not quite finished yet.

If you want to hack on GIMP, please read the file HACKING. For
detailed installation instructions, see the file INSTALL.


1. Web Resources
================

GIMP's home page is at:

	http://www.gimp.org/

Please be sure to visit this site for information, documentation,
tutorials, news, etc.  All things GIMP-ish are available from there.

The automated plug-in registry is located at:

	http://registry.gimp.org/

There you can get the latest versions of plug-ins, using a convenient
forms-based interface.

The latest version of GIMP can be found at:

	http://www.gimp.org/downloads/


2. Mailing Lists
================

We have several mailing lists dedicated to GIMP user and development
discussion.  There is more info at

	http://www.gimp.org/mail_lists.html

Links to several archives of the mailing lists are included in that page.

Gimp-announce is a low-traffic list with announcements about new
releases of GIMP and plug-ins. Gimp-user is a mailing list dedicated
to user problems, hints and tips, discussion of cool effects, etc.
Gimp-developer is oriented to GIMP core and plug-in developers.  Most
people will only want to be subscribed to gimp-user. If you want to
help develop GIMP, the gimp-developer mailing list is a good starting
point.

There is also a mailing list, "gimpwin-users", dedicated to users of the
Win32 port.  To subscribe, send an empty message to

	gimpwin-users-subscribe@egroups.com

You can also use the web interface at
http://www.egroups.com/group/gimpwin-users/. Note that as this mailing
list is hosted on egroups.com, the messages from the list contain
relatively unintrusive and easily ignored advertisements at the
end. But if you are absolutely allergic to ads, don't subscribe.


3. IRC
======

And finally, for the real junkies, there is an IRC channel devoted to
GIMP. On GIMPNet (a private free software oriented network) there is
#gimp.  Many of the developers hang out there.  Some of the GIMPNet
servers are:

	irc.gimp.org:6667
	irc.us.gimp.org:6667
	irc.eu.gimp.org:6667


4. Customizing
==============

The look of GIMP's interface can be customized like any other GTK app
by editing the ~/.gtkrc-2.0 file or by using "themes" (ready-made
customizations).  For downloadable themes and further details, see
http://gtk.themes.org.  Additionally, GIMP reads ~/.gimp-2.4/gtkrc so
you can have settings that only apply to GIMP.

Included is a set of keybindings similar to those in Adobe Photoshop.
You can find them in the ps-menurc file.  To use them, copy this file
to ~/.gimp-2.4/menurc. You can also manually change the keybindings to
any of your choice by editing ~/.gimp-2.4/menurc.


Have fun,

  Spencer Kimball
  Peter Mattis
  Federico Mena
  Manish Singh
  Sven Neumann
  Michael Natterer
  Dave Neary