[Gimp-developer] ANNOUNCE: GIMP 2.9.4 released

[Michael Natterer <mitch gimp org>]

Hi,

We just released the second development snapshot in the
GIMP 2.9.x series leading to GIMP 2.10.

This is an unstable development preview and might crash
or do whatever. If you try it for work, please save your
images more often.

For a complete list of changes since 2.9.2 please see the
"Changes" section below. We will also post more detailed
news about GIMP 2.9 on www.gimp.org soon, stay tuned.

Happy GIMPing,
--Mitch


Download
========

  GIMP 2.9.4 is available from:

  http://download.gimp.org/pub/gimp/v2.9/

  and from the mirrors listed at:

  http://www.gimp.org/downloads/#mirrors

  Please use the torrent, it distributes
  the download bandwidth across all mirrors:

  http://download.gimp.org/pub/gimp/v2.9/gimp-2.9.4.tar.bz2.torrent

  The checksum of the tarball is:

  6b3d425a7949110eeb532badedf721f3  gimp-2.9.4.tar.bz2


Overview of Changes from GIMP 2.9.2 to GIMP 2.9.4
=================================================

Core:

  Color Management:
  - add new GimpColorTransform object to create abstraction from
    LittleCMS
  - now color-managed:
    - layer/image/color palette/gradient/pattern previews
    - Color Picker tool
    - color buttons of GimpColorHistory
    - GimpFgBgEditor, as used e.g. in the toolbox
    - color selectors
    - DND widget
    - painting tools
    - copying layers/paste buffer between images
    - Colors applied to images
    - GimpColorPanel and its color dialog (color widgets in dialogs)
    - color areas created from menu actions
  - color management for grayscale images, including setting preferred
    ICC profile
  - add fast switching between color managed display and soft-proofing
  - add a per-image "is color managed" switch and show the image's
    "is color managed" state in the window title string
  - add basic support for creating images with color profiles
  - add "Optimize" options for display and soft-proofing to optionally
    speed-up rendering at the cost of color fidelity
  - add Image -> Color Management -> Save Color Profile to File...
  - improve the naming of generated ICC profiles
  - add a shortcut to the profile chooser dialog on OS X too
  - don't let display color management settings affect file import
  - enable color management when a profile is assigned to the image
  - enable color management when the image is converted from/to 
    grayscale
  - pass the right color profile around in gimp_selection_float()
  - hardcode the CMYK selector's conversion parameters, as well as NTSC
    parameters in babl/GEGL/GIMP
  - have all previews track the monitor they are on

  Core:
  - add "Select -> Flood" select action
  - add "Select -> Remove Holes" action
  - add "Border style" combo to the "Select -> Border..." dialog
  - do not request xcf compat mode when compat_toggle not sensitive
  - initialize fontconfig in the background to be able to show a 
    pulsing progress bar when rebuilding the list of fonts (typically,
    the first time GIMP runs)
  - fix the Behind blending mode
  - make Burn mode output match Gimp 2.8 (partial revert of bug 744265)
  - improve file magic matching
  - add a custom guide concept
  - improve updating the statusbar messages and icons


GUI:

  Menus:
  - move the image-duplicate action next to image-new
  - add Image -> Color Management -> Color Management Enabled
  - change "Select _Custom Color..." to "_Custom Color..."
  - change "Export" to "Export..." in the File menu

  Dialogs:
  - include recently used colors in the Dockable Colors dialog
  - add RGB-based Luminance channel to the Histogram dialog
  - fix remembering the order of dockable dialogs

  Preferences:
  - reorder the prefs categories tree and rename some pages
  - move "Snap Distance" to the prefs dialog's "Snapping" page
  - add configuration for undo preview size
  - clean-up Preferences -> Color Management
  - add "Shortcut [some modifier] + Mousewheel" for changing pen size

  Themes:
  - rename theme "Default" into "System"
  - add new GUI themes: Lighter, Light, Gray, Dark, Darker

  Icons:
  - add icon theme selection and make the icon theme path configurable 
    in prefs
  - preserve 2.8 pixel-perfect icon theme under the name "Legacy"
  - add new symbolic icon theme for GIMP
  - add a scalable icon theme and a configure option --enable-vector-
    icons

  Widgets:
  - add new GimpBufferSourceBox widget and use it in GimpOperationTool

  View/Display:
  - fix various bugs related to rotated canvas
  - make GIMP not ignore 'Maximized' hints on startup in Windows
  - enable a pulsing progress bar in the splash
  - make new images jump around much less
  - fix image position when entering/leaving fullscreen mode
  - make layer boundary re-drawn correctly on scrolling
  - make images not appear completely black when images dockable is 
    visible
  - have all previews track the monitor they are on


Tools:

  Fuzzy Select:
  - add "Diagonal neighbors" option

  Foreground Select:
  - fix ghost brush outline

  Bucket Fill:
  - add "Diagonal neighbors" option

  Posterize:
  - turn the posterize tool into an ordinary GEGL filter
  - remove posterize from Tools -> Colors

  Desaturate:
  - turn the Desaturate tool into a normal GEGL filter
  - move "Desaturate" to Colors -> Desaturate

  Align:
  - add vertical offset to distribution options

  Paths:
  - improve performance

  Flip:
  - rename options to "Transform" and "Direction"

  Cage Transform:
  - fix a few performance issue

  Unified Transform:
  - make the tool not fail when currently selected layer is hidden

  Text:
  - fix text input methods to work in-place (not in an overlayed box)
  - add background colors setting, only exposed for advanced input 
    methods

  Blend:
  - use gegl:distance-transform in the blend tool, it has a progress 
    now
  - make shapeburst work with the new interactive gradient code

  All Painting Tools:
  - add mirror symmetry
  - remove artifacts from painting tools in Burn blending mode
  - add shortcut actions for changing spacing, hardness, and force

  MyPaint:
  - dramatically improve performance of the tool and enable it by 
    default
  - add Colorize mode
  - add a toggle to change between erase & paint mode
  - add a brush selector to the MyPaint brush options
  - add a dockable dialog to choose a brush, with tagging
  - read tags from MyPaint brushes
  - improve blend math
  - allow plug-ins to register procedures in the <MyPaintBrushes> menu

  Smudge:
  - fix the clipping of out-of-gamut channel values
  - fix the handling of layers with alpha channels

  Ink:
  - the range of angle is now [-PI..PI]


Plug-ins/GEGL Filters:

  Preview:
  - add a "split preview" feature to GEGL ops
  - allow to switch the split preview between horizontal and vertical
  - allow to swap the before/after position

  Filters:
  - update the "Recently used" menu with GEGL filters
  - replace Selective Gaussian Blur with the GEGL version
  - add gegl:saturation as Colors -> Saturation
  - add gegl:high-pass as Filters > Enhance > High Pass
  - add new gegl:gegl filter that executes a custom processing chain
  - port Tile and Pagecurl plug-ins to GEGL
  - refactor the screenshot plug-in into backend and front-ends, one
    per X.org, Wayland, Windows, OS X
  - add Monochrome option to the GEGL version of Channel Mixer
  - bring dialog titles and help IDs to GEGL filter dialogs

  File Plug-Ins:
  - add darktable plug-in to pre-process varios raw images
  - port file-gif-save and file-tiff to GIO
  - TIFF support:
    - make libtiff a hard dependency
    - merge the file-tiff-load and file-tiff-save plug-ins
    - fix various tiff exporting bugs
  - EXR support:
    - read comment, Exif, and XMP data from EXR files
    - use GIMP's internal profile when loading EXR
  - PSD support:
    - fix the loading of files with adjustment or fill layers
    - fix the reading of layer group structure
  - fix the raw image loader
  - fix the layer groups support in OpenRaster
  - code cleanup in file-bmp
  - fix the exporting of KISS - CELL (*.cel) images
  - resurrect the email plugin
  - use GIO to figure if a file is hidden

  PyGimp:
  - update pyconsole code
  - add binding for GimpImageType
  - add GimpColorConfig object
  - add type definition for GimpColorManaged
  - make GimpParasite type known to the code generator
  - require Pycairo in configure, link gimpui against pycairo
  - fix the application of paintbrush size in Python scripts

  Script-Fu:
  - make regex matching return character indexes
  - fix the hanging of Script-fu on machines with 64-bit longs
  - update tinyscheme code from upstream


PDB:

  - Bug 759104 - Allow coordinates of sample points to be accessed from
    scripts


Build:

  build/win:
  - Start building libmypaint.
  - Add pcre and upgrade glib2 to 2.48.1
  - Upgrade exiv2 to 0.25
  - Clear DISPLAY before building
  - Disable webkitgtk


OS-specific changes:

  Windows:
  - Add support for generating crash backtraces using Dr. MingW


Contributors
============

  Adrian Likins, Alexandre Prokoudine, Alexia Death, Andrew Worsley,
  Benoit Touchette, Carol Spears, Daniel Sabo, Ell, Elle Stone,
  Hartmut Kuhse, Jasper Krijgsman, Jehan, Jonathan Tait, João
  S. O. Bueno, Kevin Cozens, Kristian Rietveld, Massimo Valentini,
  Michael Henning, Michael Natterer, Michael Schumacher, Mukund
  Sivaraman, Pedro Gimeno, Piotr Drąg, Richard Hughes, Richard
  Kreckel, Shmuel H, Simon Budig, Sven Claussner, Thomas Manni,
  Tobias Ellinghaus, draekko, klausstaedtler, nmat, saul, Øyvind
  Kolås.


Translators
===========

  A S Alam, Alexandre Prokoudine, Ask Hjorth Larsen, Balázs Meskó,
  Balázs Úr, Christian Kirbach, Cédric Valmary, Daniel Korostil,
  Daniel Mustieles, Dimitris Spingos, Dušan Kazik, Eugene Kuligin,
  Gábor Kelemen, Hartmut Kuhse, J.M. Ruetter, Jehan, Jordi Mas,
  Khaled Hosny, Marco Ciampa, Mario Blättermann, Martin Srebotnjak,
  Michael Natterer, Mónica Canizo, Necdet Yücel, Pedro Albuquerque,
  Piotr Drąg, Richard Kreckel, Rūdolfs Mazurs, Sebastian Rasmussen,
  Sveinn í Felli, Tiago Santos, Tobias Ellinghaus, Yolanda Álvarez
  Pérez, klausstaedtler, kolbjoern, Милош Поповић.