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

[peter sikking <peter mmiworks net>]

hi all,

Joao asked me personally to comment here, so here I am.

I will do some horrible top-posting because I think
I can summarise quite a bit what you wrote.

I believe what you refer to below are ‘macros.’

simple enough: at any point in GIMP where an operation
can be applied, a macro can also be applied.

I intent to help GIMP users to make/edit macros in many ways:
record them; grab a bunch of operations from the operations
stack and put a name on it; write some source text in a file.

do keep in mind that macros are nothing but a convenience
for some GIMP users, not all GIMP users. a macro is never
the single solution to a problem.

first working with operations (see
<http://blog.mmiworks.net/2012/01/gimp-full-gegl-ahead.html>
for an old sketch, will be updated at lgm) has to work in
a sufficient fashion before we can think of introducing macros.

ps: first we would have to start supporting ‘export pipelines’
where users can define a series of operations for each pipeline,
and save these to be used in different xcf files, before macros
could be used in these pipelines.

users should not have to learn macros to make use of these
pipelines (a macro is never the single solution to a problem).

> 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.



    --ps

        founder + principal interaction architect
            man + machine interface works

        http://blog.mmiworks.net: on interaction architecture