Re: New to GTK; some beginner questions.

[Michael Torrie <torriem chem byu edu>]

On Tue, 2003-12-02 at 12:23, Amit BHATNAGAR wrote:
> Hi all.
> 
> I am considering using GTK+ to develop an app for Solaris 8, and I 
> could use some help in answering some of my questions that would allow
> me to make a decision on whether or not to use GTK+. I have searched
> the FAQ & online docs, however if any of my questions have documented
> answers that I failed to find, please point me in the right direction.
> 
> The app that I would be creating would largely deal with viewing radar
> images, and I would require to do some image manipulation, (zoom, pan, 
> filtering, contrast, brightness, display multiple images, edge detection,
> mirror, etc). I would like to use GTKmm (and Glademm) as C++ would be
> my primary development language of choice.
> 
> #1 Does GTK provide an API that I can use to perform the above operations? 
> Since GTK is closely connected with GIMP, is it possible to use GIMP to 
> achieve this? (assuming that GIMP has an API). I have read the documentation
> for GtkImage and even GdkPixmap, but nothing would suggest that image
> manipulation is possible from these. 

GdkPixmap is going away.  The replacement you should use is GdkPixbuf
which has all kinds of functions for scaling and manipulation, including
alpha-compositing of alpha-channel pixbufs.  GdkPixbuf has built-in
loaders for a variety of image formats and does let you manipulate  it
on a pixel level.  You could then apply your own matrix
transformations.  You then typically draw the GdkPixbuf onto a
GtkDrawingArea widget.

> 
> #2 Is my only other alternative to use a library like ImageMagick to 
> perform these operations? Is there a GTK(mm) interface for this? I have
> found GDKMagick but this seems to be very old (obsolete?). There is also
> Magic++, but again I don't know how this integrates well within a GTK app.
> Is there any better alternative than ImageMagick?

GdkPixbuf works very well as I mentioned, but ImageMagick has been  a
very good library too (not to be confused with GdkImageMagick).  I'm
pretty sure ImageMagick can integrate with GTK.  GtkMM has a full
object-oriented version of GdkPixbuf which I've used before and it's
quite workable.  

I think GTK and GTK-- would work very well for you.  If you do a small
test program to get familiar with the toolkit you should be able to
determine if it has the vital features you need.

Michael

> 
> Thanks in advance for your assistance.
> 
> amit.
> 
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-- 
Michael Torrie <torriem chem byu edu>