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.
===================================================================

gui/functionality seperation
	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)


fix the palette dialogs:
	 (it would be nice to be able to actually edit
	palettes and the like), also replace that menubox with a clist or
	something. Right now, the palette dialog is unresizeable, and
	mostly useledd useless for anything other than picking colors.
	Import/Export options for palettes here would be good to.


integrate palette saving into core:
	 An option to save a current
	images pallete to a file is handy. Theres currently a plugin to
	do this, but for integration it might be better in the core. 

more configurabilty (eek)

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.

file new dialog stuff   (i'm working on this...Adrian)
	1. default to size of cut buffer
	2. add units and resolution options
	3. make x,y values have dropdowns for last 5 or so used sizes
	4. maybe an estimate of how much ram the image will take?
	5. maybe some "preset" common image sizes?

export filters:
	This is one that would make some alot of sense intuitively, and could
	be very conveint for scripting. Currently, theres no "one step" way
	to save images easily. This feaure would be useful for example in the
	Mail plugin, where it could flatten, convert, etc the image in one step.

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.

save/restore state of major dialogs:
	Gimp currently has no way to save the state of the gimp desktop. Perhaps
	some of the gnome session management stuff could be useful
	here. It should be exported to the PDB too.

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.

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. 

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. 

paths, and better beziers would be a nice touch:
	 Being able to load, save bezier paths, and convert from bezier to
	selection, and selection to bezier would be very benificial. This
	combined with a working iscissors would make for extremely flexible selection mechanisms.

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.

natural media tools (raph?)

A "Revert To" menu options:
	Open a image, munge it around a whole bunch, decide you dont like the
	results, and you dont have enough undo steps. File->revert
	would easily reload the file from disk.

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.

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. 

Interactive resizing/scaling of layers (maybe with handles on the edges)

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.

status bars on image window: 
	(maybe swallow plug-in progress bars, show current x,y, file
	type, etc...) 
	( I think snorfle is working on this)
	- optionally show that information in the toolbar ?
	- probably dragable to the toolbar and vice versa

"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.

more indicators of current status:
	(X,Y position, selection size and placement etc ),
	maybe in another dialog, maybe a status bar?
	Lots of request for this. Think snorfle is working on it.

Clean up swapfiles:
	 Gimp is prone to leaving large swapfiles lying around. Perhaps on
	startup or exit it could clean up unclaimed swapfiles. Problem: how to
	tell a unclaimed swap file (one could be in use by another
	gimp). Maybe add a  unique id to the swap file?

Automagically guess whats a good tilecache size:
	Not sure how to do this. maybe offer suggestions in the preference dialog or install.

an artist palette type of color selector:
	 (maybe based on raphs watercolor deal?) 
	notebooked with the regular color selector? (believe seth is working on this).

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.

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.cis 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.
	

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.
	

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 abl 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?

session management


Text Tool
	More complete font selection
	Multiple lines and alignment
	Kerning, hints, etc.

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.

Overwork the transform tools UI:
	 It would be nice if the transformation
	wouldn't automatically start when releasing the mouse. Instead have a window
	that shows the currently choosen transformation numerically 
	(e.g. Scale X: 0.75 | Scale Y: 1.00). The transformation should be editable
	there and with handles on the outline. Perform the transformation when "OK" is
	clicked in the dialog or when you doubleclick(?) into the image. 

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.

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?
	Would be difficult, but possibly very useful.
	see http://www.netrover.com/~rayl/gimp/