gimp/NEWS

GIMP 1.1 - New features                    -*- text -*-

The following list tries to describe all the new features that are
already implemented or currently being worked on. I cannot guarantee
that I describe everything correctly, since for most items I haven't
read the code but only looked at the ChangeLog entry. I can however
guarantee that a few things are missing.

Older items are on top, newer ones further down the list. At the end a
few common things are listed.

XInput support
   GIMP does now support special input devices like drawing tablets by
   default. It depends on the device being supported by your
   XServer. This is true for example for Wacom drawing
   tablets. Support for multiple devices, pressure and tilt
   sensitivity is slowly added to all paint tools.

Ink tool
   A nice new toy that really comes to life if you have an extended
   input device as described above.

'File New' dialog
   The new dialog for creating new images allows to use real life
   units like centimeters and inches along with a resolution entry.

Hex display
   A small but nifty feature was added to the Color Picker: It know
   displays the HEX triplet of the selected color. Useful for WEB
   artists.

Pop-up button
   The small rectangle between the rulers in the upper left corner of
   the image window now gives access to the menu. Useful for people
   with tablets or two-button mice.

Status bar
   The image display know has a status bar. Plug-ins display their
   progress there and your mouse coordinates are displayed. Most tools
   use it too. The Selection tool for example shows the selection size
   while you drag.  And don't worry, it's possible to hide the
   status bar to save screen estate.

GUI enhancements
   Lots of nifty enhancements to the user interface. Spinbuttons are
   used in a lot of places. More stuff like that has to be added in
   the future...

Session management
   GIMP remembers window positions and sizes and restores them on
   startup. Not currently working.

Selections
   New algorithms are now used to grow and shrink the selection. The
   result looks much better!

PDB interface
   A lot more internal functions are now exported to the PDB. This
   should for example allow the GIMP Animation Plugin to work without
   changes to the GIMP core.

Better tile-caching
   Tiles are now more intelligently cached and a threaded process
   tries to swap out dirty tiles before you run out of physical
   memory.

Copy On Write
   The MAD-COW patches that appeared too late to get integrated into
   GIMP-1.0 are now integrated. And...its FASTER!!

Document Index
   The document index keeps track of the images you used with The
   GIMP. You can even drag in an image from a file-manager (GNOME MC
   for example).

Editable Brushes
   Well, editable brushes still need some work, but the basics are
   there...

Fixed size selections
   The size or the aspect ratio of selections can now be entered
   numerically as well.

Script-Fu interface improvements
   The Script-Fu dialog now allows a whole bunch of entry widgets,
   like selectors for fonts, brushes, gradients and patterns. Strings
   can be entered without the nasty quotes and numerical entries can
   use sliders and spinbuttons.  Most of the scripts were already
   updated.

Quick Reference
   The Quick Reference sheet looks much better and holds more
   information. A must-have for your desktop.

Transform Tool UI
   The user interface for the Transform tool has seen a major
   overhaul. It now offers a new 'Corrective' mode that for example
   makes it easy to correct slightly rotated scans.

Color representation
   GIMP now uses GdkRGB to provide better dithering for non truecolor
   displays. This should also speed GIMP up a bit.

Parasites
   Arbitrary data can be attached to an image and be retrieved later.

Tattoos
   A unique stamp can be attached to drawables. That way a plug-in can
   easily keep track of layers.

Dialogs
   A few dialogs can now be controlled via the PDB. That allows a
   plug-in to use the internal dialogs to select brushes, patterns and
   gradients.

Idle-Renderer
   Display re-rendering is now handled in an interruptible
   asynchronous thread. This makes The GIMP more responsive especially
   when working with the Layers-dialog.

Resolution support
   Each image now has a resolution associated with it. This needs to
   be integrated better into the GUI, but there are already a few file
   plug-ins that make use of this.

GimpPerl
   The GIMP-Perl extension is now part of GIMP-1.1.

Monitor resolution
   The image can now be displayed in float scale factors. If GIMP
   knows about your monitor resolution it displays one inch as one
   inch. Still needs some work...

Help in the DB Browser
   The DB Browser now also display the help that is available for a
   lot of functions in the PDB.

Internationalization
   National Language Support is coming!

New plug-ins
   Various new plug-ins were added. More have appeared in the Registry
   and wait to be added or updated. A few nice ones that are now
   included:

      * WaterSelect - a nifty way to select colors
      * NewsPrint - whee, you have to see that 
      * Guillotine - slices the image up along its guides 

Internals
   Lots of changes were made to GIMP internals that I don't understand
   correctly, like objectification and removal of the image ID
   system. Read the ChangeLog yourself to figure this out.

GTK+ compatibility
   GIMP 1.1 makes use of the development version of GTK+. Therefore a
   whole lot of work has been put in following the GTK+ development
   and keeping The GIMP in sync.

Plug-ins and Scripts
   Various plug-ins and scripts not mentioned above have been updated
   or fixed to work with changes in the GIMP core or GTK+. One day I
   might add a list of all changed plug-ins to this list...

Color selectors
   An API has been added to allow the addition of any number of
   different color selection systems via pluggable modules. The GTK
   color selector and a triangle color selector have been added to the
   color selection dialog through this new system.

Better feedback 
   Internal operations that take a long time to complete (transforms,
   gradients, etc.) now display a progress bar and cursor change to
   inform the user about what's going on.

Miscellaneous
   - The painting functions (brush, pencil, airbrush, etc.) have been
     optimized.
   - The GAP plugin, which has some essential animation features, is
     being integrated into GIMP.
   - The font selector has been redesigned.
   - The new, slightly incomplete MAINTAINERS file should help track
     responsibility and expertise for various GIMP parts.

Copyright 1998 by Sven Neumann
Modified by Zach Beane