Re: [Gimp-developer] Enhancement Request for GIMP: Clone layers

[Øyvind Kolås <pippin gimp org>]

On Tue, Feb 6, 2018 at 4:13 AM, Miguel Lopez <reptillia39 live com> wrote:
> Hi GIMP developers,
>
> Complying with the wishes of developers - " An enhancement request should never be filed without prior 
> discussion on the gimp-developer mailing list<https://www.gimp.org/mail_lists.html>."
>
> That being said, I wonder if GIMP would benefit from clone layers found in Krita. Clone layers enables 
> automated editing by simply copy and pasting. Like literally, you don't need to copy and paste or change 
> layers manually, and you can do some quick operations without the need for scripting for some tasks. Like 
> say, if you can use group as a clone layer, you can literally use a clone layer of a group into different 
> group with different layers overlay, and automate your editing.

> In the long run, when GIMP 3.x comes, this may introduce issue such as massive slowdowns as if you were to 
> clone a group with filter layers on it, this would severely slow down editing at the benefit of enabling 
> automated editing which save time in the long run.Also, there does seem to be a issue of loop to be 
> considered.

Clones in the layer stack is the direction I have been pushing GIMP
towards since 2007/2008, but GIMP takes a lot of time to catch up. Any
acyclic processing graph consisting of only nodes with 1 output pad
and 1-2 input pads can be expressed as a node-tree with clones. And
conversion can be automatic, this is also how the GEGL XML
representation of arbitrary graphs is expressed.

/Øyvind K - https://pippin.gimp.org/