[Gimp-developer] Creation of a "set of operations" item

["Joao S. O. Bueno" <gwidion mpc com br>]

Hi,
I would like to discuss about the possibility
 of a "Set of operations" GIMP item -

In the current state of GIMP, I think one
nice thing to have would be the ability to
specify sets of GEGL operations that could
be re-used across the UI in some different places.

One example of such "Set of operations" could be,
for example, a gaussian blur filter - the set
includes the parameters as well. Another
example could be a "Resample to 50% size, Unsharp mask"
set.

Where could those be used?
I thought of primarily two places - with more potential
nice places to come along:

    1. As an "adjust layer" - just that - have
    a special Layer class that encapsulates a set
    of Gegl operations, and apply then to the
    rendering of the layer imediatelly bellow.
    This would give us "Adjustment layers"
    as they are called in other software,
    essentialy "for free"

    2. Attached to an image, as a set to be
    automatically applied before exporting the
    image to an specific format.
    Currently, the "merge-visible-layers" action
    is performed at this stage, for most formats.
    But in some mail-threads here it became clear that
    the ability to resize an image to an specific
    size, among other things, could greatly
    simplify the current workflow for keeping
    a high-quality XCF image, and exporting
    incremental versions of down-sampled/filtered
    versions for production. (Like in edit, save,
    resize to 50%, export as PNG - undo to further
    editing the image, and the resize is lost, and must
    be reapplied when exporting the new version)

And there could be some "bonus places" to attach these
"sets of operations":
    3. To patterns, before applying them - so
    that rotation and scaling of patterns would
    be easy
    4. To brush masks, as part of the painting dynamics.


Can we discuss this further along?
I know Mitch is experimenting with
operations attached to layers, but I don't
know wether they are along thse lines, or more
like recording all operations mad in a layer,
in an early quest to "non destructive editting".

Maybe there is a roadmap for a similar
thing already, that I am not aware of - but
having the "sets of operations" behave
as regular GIMP items that can be used - and
being able to pick/create then at the layers dialog
bucket fill tool options, export dialogs, could
be a nice way of enabling the possibilities
of GEGL and non-destructive editing to end users.

Regards,

  js
 -><-