Re: [Gimp-developer] Shape layers for GIMP?

[Bill Skaggs <weskaggs gmail com>]

I would call this a "clipping path" rather than a shape layer.  I
don't think it would be very hard to implement, except for one
difficulty.  The last time I looked (a couple of years ago), the GIMP
path system required all paths to belong to an image's path list,
making it impossible for a path to belong properly to a layer or other
object.  Until that requirement is relaxed, it won't be possible to do
this in a reasonable way.  The requirement also prevents a proper
implementation of text-along-a-path.

  - Bill