[ANNOUNCE] GimpMill - A Sawmill Theme Tool

[Ian McKellar <yakk-gnome-list yakk net au>]

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                                   A Sawmill theme tool for The GIMP.

GimpMill is a GIMP plugin written in Python using James Henstrige's 
really cool Python GIMP bindings. It allows the construction of Sawmill
themes within The GIMP - extending the GIMP interface to allow theme 
creation like the GAP extends it to allow animation creation.

To run GimpMill you'll need GIMP 1.1 installed (I'm using 1.1.14, but I
don't know what other versions will work) and pygimp (Debian package
gimp-python, or look at http://www.daa.com.au/~james/pygimp/). Just copy
the gimpmill.py file to ~/.gimp-1.1/plug-ins and start The GIMP.

GimpMill's design revolves around the design of Sawmill and its themes, 
so to understand how to use GimpMill you'll need to have a understanding
of Sawmill themes. Sawmill themes are based around "frame parts" - images
or text that are stuck to the outside of windows. 

To use GimpMill, first create a mockup "screenshot" of how you would like
one window to look. Next turn the "application window" bit of your image
(i.e the bit in between your window borders) into its own layer - the size
of the window - by selecting the area and using <Image>/Select/Float and
then <Layers>/New. Name this layer "WINDOW". For each of the frame parts
create a separate layer in the way described above, but call each of these
"PART: name" where name will be used in the image name. To set frame part
attributes append "name = value" pairs to the frame part's layer's name
(e.g. "PART: closebutton class=close-button"). Finally to specify the
difference between the default frame decoration and the focussed,
mouseover, etc decoration you can optionally create layers called NORMAL,
FOCUSED, HIGHLIGHTED and CLICKED. These are merged with frame part layers
before they're saved. Often a black layer with 50% opacity in "Multiply"
mode will be what you're after, but if nececarry you can provide complete
replacement images.

Finally "<Image>/Filters/Misc/Make Sawmill Theme" will build your theme
and put it in your ~/.sawmill/themes directory - ready for you to use and
test.

Take a look at the BoldLineY.xcf for the nitty gritty implementation
details.

PROBLEMS:
  o GIMP 1.1.14 seems to have a bug converting floating selections into
    layers by pressing <Layers>/New. If often gets the size wrong and
    generally internally confused.
  o Only one frame type is supported. It is used for default, transient,
    shaped and shaped-transient windows. I would like to support differnt
    frame types, but I can't think of an elegant way of doing it. I would
    certainly welcome suggestions.
  o Its probably hard to produce really complex themes fully using this
    tool. It is however a good way to produce the required images and an
    initial theme.jl file. I'm planning to support tiled images when I can 
    think of a nice way of specifying them (again, ideas are more than
    welcome).

NOTE: BoldLineY is based off the BoldLineY screenshot I got off
http://www.kaleidoscope.net/. It was designed by Hideaki Kamada. Some more
of his themes (or schemes as Kaleidoscope calls them) for the Mac are
available at:
  http://www.kaleidoscope.net/cgi-bin/schemes.cgi?author=hideakikamada
  
Enjoy, and don't forget to submit your themes to sawmill.themes.org.
Updates will be posted at http://www.yakk.net/projects.gimpmill.html.
Files are stored at ftp://ftp.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au/members/yakk/gimpmill/.

Ian McKellar <yakk@yakk.net>                              Tue Jan 11 2000

-- 
Ian  McKellar | Email: yakk(a)yakk.net     | Web: http://www.yakk.net/
Fax: +61 (8) 9265 0821 / +0 (775) 205 0307 | Home: +61 (8) 9389 9152
If God didn't want us to eat animals, he wouldn't have made them out of meat.