gimp/TODO

Please add things to this file when the need to do them is
discovered. Explanations of why or how this would be useful are
even better. Insight into possible ways to implement are even better
than that.
===================================================================

Add Unsharp Mask to the distribution.  The filter is just way too basic
to leave out.


A few GUI things suggestions...

   1) Crop tool could have an optional shader for the outside area
      so when you crop, the area outside would show in a darker color /
      user definable color / black / white etc.. (maybe a selector for
      the outside area:                  ____________ 
                         Outside fill: [|_none_______| = ]
                                        |.black......|
                                        |.white......|
                                        |.user def...|
                                        |.shade 50%..|
                                        `------------'
      That would be very handy for cropping scanned photos etc - 
      one would see the result much easier apart from the rest.

gui/functionality separation

	both file scope wise and in use, particulary so that
	the gui version of the tool uses the pdb whenever possible
	(for finding bugs, and for macro recording)

	May be a good idea to actually put the core and the gui in
	separate subdirectories.  --sg

more configurabilty (eek)

	I would like to be able to let the user stick arbitrary
	buttons into the toolbox and attach arbitrary functions to
	them.  --sg

	What about a second button-bar? We dont have icons  to add to the  
	main toolbar  anyway,  so it would  be hard to  distinguish  what
	button does  what (they are small -> text wont fit). 
	Look at my mockup:
		http://tigert.gimp.org/files/temp/wilber_palette.gif
	It might work in such way that 
	   1. you click add -> new button
	   2. then right click  on it -> you would get the normal <Image>-menu 
              (like when clicking right mousebutton over an image) from which  
              you could select  the plugin/tool  to assign to this button. 
 	   3. To apply  the thing  to an  image you  first  click  on the 
	      button and the  statusbar would  show something like 'click 
	      on an image to  apply function xxxx' ->  click an  image to
	      assign the tool an image and apply it.
	Now this is just an idea, but  it might solve the 'which image do
	we want to apply things to? -problem.
	Also  see http://www.home.unix-ag.org/simon/gimp/gimpbuttons.html
	Simon Budig  has an experiment  similar  to this.  Maybe it would
	make sense to implement something like this?
								--tigert 

fix stuff so that the tile size could actually be changed eventually

	Currently gimp core is mostly setup to use a potentially
	variable tilesize, but lots of plugins and some internal stuff
	are hardcoded to expect 64x64 tiles. This is good for 8-bit
	images on x86, but with potential of deep images and other
	platforms, having this variable could be a real gain in
	performance tweaking.  

	This will be hard because the XCF file format assumes 64x64
	tiles.  XCF load/save will have to be written to retile
	images, or the XCF file format redesigned.  --sg

previews in file save (for jpeg compression, etc):

	Currently there is no easy way to see the effects of
	compression or other image saving effects before actually
	saving and reloading an image.

keybindings for simple "binary" tools:

	(for ex, flip should flip horiz normal, and shift+click to
	shift vertically). The more that can be done by power-users
	without having to delve through dialogs the better.  This is
	mostly implemented already.

curve deal in the gradient editor?:

	It could be useful to have a curve widget for each of the
	color channels or hsv. For example, you have a custom palette
	you like, but you want it to get dark from left to right. You
	pop up the "Value" curve and make a curve getting darker.

	(Note: this would require a complete rewrite of the gradient
	_engine_, not just the editor. --sg)

some degree of drawing tools, straight line, etc:

	Perhaps large parts of gfig could be salvaged for this. Its
	not something "paint" programs traditionaly do, but there
	usefulnes is obvious. square/circle/ellipse are already there
	basically (just make a wrapper to select and stroke). need a
	better straigh line drawing ui though.

Macro recording and better scripting support:

	This pretty much is going to require the aforementioned
	gui/func seperation. More stuff needs to be triggered via pdb
	to make thsi a possibilty.

More Xinput stuff ( gradient brushes, pen "strokes" ?):

	This is very important for "artist" types. The more
	value-added utility we can make for Xinput stuff the better.

Redesign of the Blend Tool dialog? (it's rather large...)

"Fit text to selection": 

	make selection, scale text to fit it... A suggestion from
	Xach, Perhaps instead of rendering the text and font size
	exactly, make a bounding box of it, then scale the bounding
	box as approriate. When the box size is chosen, figure out the
	best-fit font size and render it.

	instead of rendering into a preview, render preview directly
	onto the image. 

	(Text should be redone entirely, with a native T1/TTF
	interpreter.  Using X to render text is cheap but nasty. --sg)

	Done via a perl script hack -sjb

a complete groundup rewrite of iscissors: 

	Isciissors in theory are very useful. 1.0 iscissors basically
	dont work though. It has also been mentioned that the gui from
	.54 was much better.

	(austin has some of 0.54 ported.  If intrested, mail sjburges@gimp.org
	or yosh@gimp.org for sources, as austin is on an extended leave)

progress bars on long proccesses:

	Xcf loading/saving, transforms, complicated blend's etc. The
	user gets no feedback about what is going on. This is bad.

	(Maybe run core image ops from the idle loop?  We already do
	this for curves et al. --sg)

	We have some of this in place thanks to Aspirin and Austin now.
	--Yosh

	Currently, long-term ops like blend run from a recursive event
	loop, not the idle loop like they should.  This should be cleaned up a
	little. -- Austin.

status bars on image window: 

	(maybe swallow plug-in progress bars, show current x,y, file
	type, etc...) 
	
	This is mostly done.

	- optionally show that information in the toolbar ?
	- probably dragable to the toolbar and vice versa
	(still being debated what belongs in there -SJB)

"open into layer" and new image from cut buffer stuff should perhaps
be in core?:

	This would be "Paste into New" and/or "Copy to New". Should be
	simple. Theres a script to do this, but the functionailty is
	so simple it perhaps would eb best to do in core.

drag & drop for layers:

	(both in the dialog, and from image to image).  Changing
	postion of layers now is quite a pain. The onyl choices are to
	raise by one, and lower by one. It would be much nicer to be
	able to click & drag a layer to its new spot in the stack.

Handle Out of Space Better!

	Also should handle out-of-space on swap device better.
	(Couldn't be much worse.) --sg

Automagically guess whats a good tilecache size:

	Not sure how to do this. maybe offer suggestions in the
	preference dialog or install.

BETTER FONT SUPPORT! 

	even if we have to go around X. and a better font selector
	too. Perhaps the new gtk font selector could be used. It seems
	handy. The actual support may require integration of type1lib
	or freetype or similar. Probabaly be an extension, gimp could
	fall back to X font rendering if need be.

	Refresh font list while running.

	(There's a good argument for making all text operations run
	thru an extension. --sg)

ability to get an exact count of the total number of colors in the
image:

	Xpm plugin has an algo to do this. Perhaps it should be in the
	core.

indexed/color reducing to arbitrary number of colors:

	Current convert.c is limited to indexing to 8-bit palettes or
	less.  Dont know what would be involved in making it work for
	larger palettes. convert.c has some deep magic involved in it,
	so who knows.

	(Related: indexed images with more than 8 bits depth.  --sg)

Folding box for the toolbar:

	So you can have it be 9x3 like now, or 1x27, or
	whatever... gyve has rough outlines of a widget to do this...
	(belive msw is working on this)

optimize transform_core (special cases, fft stuff?, optimizations only
raph understands, etc...)

brush-shaped cursors:

	Possible solutions, generate cursors on the fly, use shaped
	pixmaps, possibly just draw directly on the preview, any other
	ideas?  Raphs caanvas might offer the oppurtunity to do this
	in color and anti-aliased.

active brushes:
	Use module system to dynamically load new brush types, eg
	Raph's(?) watercolour brushes, pixmap brushes, or image hose
	style brushes.  Need to define a proper API for hooking.
	Maybe really want to define new tool types, rather than new brush
	types.

pixmap brushes:

	Should be simple. maybe need a new format that would include
	data/mask (probabaly just use a xcf). Once its loaded in as a
	tempbuf, a few tweaks in the paint tools ought to handle
	it. Should it be a new tool?  jsut a new brush type for old
	paint to ls?

Quickmask/paintable selections:

	Any ideas on the best way to do the ui? The fundamentals of
	beng able to do this are already there. Just need a good way to
	present it.

let pdb stuff register under the layers_dialog menu:

	Lots of potential in scripts to do layer/channel manip.  Might
	as well let them register on those menus.

some sort of mdi for dialogs so you could tab them together or
pull them apart:

	Would be nice to be able to pile all the dialogs into one big
	notebook.  (think msw is working on this)

make color picker able to choose from any color on the screen. 

	This sounds really simple. Any ideas?

dodge/burn/sponge/smudge tools:

	several people have commented on the need for this. Anyone
	know how to do it well?

	Maybe integrate iwarp stuff into 'convolve' tool (or into a separate
	one)? Iwarp gui could be put into the tool options dialog 
	-tigert

	Calvin has committed dodge/burn/smudge stuff recently (5/July/1999).

big cad style cross-hairs cursor:
	guides come close, but we probabaly dont wont somethign like
	that again.

more info available to the user in general (current brush, etc)

some sort of image locking:
	 so we don't munge images by doing >1 ops on them at once.
	For plugins in particular, may also simplifie some of the tool
	redesign.

Suggestion from Ville Hautamaki (CW): 
	Pattern groups
	Especially once patterns are demand-loaded. It would be
	very conveint to say "load all the wood patterns",
	or even just "set 1" etc.

Probably have a "Preview" button too that performs the transformation 
without interpolation:
	As it stands, transforms can be very slow and feedback to the
	user is smalld. A preiview would save much time and maek the action
	more accururate.

Selections should always be bezierifyable.
	Um, not sure about this one.  Selections can be a mask, in which case 
	the bezeirifying of it makes little sense to me..
	
	I'll admit it'd be nice for "normal" selections. -sjb

Selections should be transformable:
	(e.g. rotate an elliptical selection; the selection, not it's
	content!!).
	This shouldnt be too hard. Perhaps just need to add the hooks
	for the selection info (usually in TileManager structs) to
	be passed to the existent image ops. 
	
Have a possibility to add a text as selection:
	If selections would be editable as described above, we'd 
	then have editable vector-text. Is this possibel with type1 fonts?

option to create New Indexed image (with the choice of pattern foo) ?

Integrate gimp-16 stuff?
	Eventually will happen.
	see http://film.gimp.org/

Better use of wm hints.

	Not sure where the line between dialogs and windows
	lies, but it's something to look into. 

Make file load/save errors not worthy of existence.

	Right now the errors from the file plugins pop
	up in weird places, at weird times, and are often
	basically useless. This is bad.

Image pager/explorer

	Basically similar in idea to a pager on a virtual desktop
	wm, except a large image is the pager. Pop up a small preview 
	of the image, with a higlighted rectangle indicaing the currently
	viewable area. User can then move around in the preview and the
	highlighted area becomes the on screen viewable part. May
	also be useful in file loading, where one could see a preview of a
	large image and then jsut select a subset toa ctually load into
	mem.

Code to set built in icons or icon path?

	Is this the wm's job or soemthing internal?


Action/active/Procedural Layers

	People seem to want them. For some ops it would be painfully
	easy. For alot of stuff i havent a clue. Anyone have a good plan
	on how to potentialy implement this?

generic preview code in libgimp for use by plugins

	All plugins should have a preview. it would be nice if there
	were code in libgimp to make this easier. Possibly just
	generalize a good exmaple of preview code (quartics?) and
	slap it in libgimp. Maybe throw some of the gck stuff in there
	too. Or possibly make a new plugin helper lib combining
	gck, megawidget, preview code, etc.

	"All" plugins might be too extreme.  Some plugins (autostretch 
	contrast) have little need for an interface, and exist IMHO 
	better w/o one..

Undo groups

	basically for snapshots for the UNDO stack instead of realying on
	everything to be recorded. Particualr useful in scripts.

named undo
	Each pushing of an undo operation should include a textual
	string for human consumption.  That way, the "undo" menu
	option can list exactly what will be undone.  Also allows
	meaningful undo history display, so you can undo multiple
	levels in one go.

gradient map layer

	map values from current gradient to value/intensity
	(good for a plugin I think)

tools

	Make tools listen for gimage dirty signals to fix munging.
	When a tool caches image data privately, you need to reset
	when the image gets dirty.

Grid

	A gridding, and a snap to gridding. Basically a way of turning on 
        and off a grid, and setting the grid size. Then also a way of starting  
        to draw at a grid intersection and then end drawing at another 
        intersection.
				(this was suggested to me by email -- Sven)