gimp/NEWS

The GNU Image Manipulation Program Version 2.1
----------------------------------------------

This is the development branch of The GIMP. Here's where new features
are being added. In a not too distant future the next stable GIMP
release, GIMP 2.2, will emerge out of this.


Overview of Changes since 2.0
=============================

GIMP 2.1 includes the following enhancements:

 - Major user interface improvements.

   * Large parts of the GIMP user interface have been changed to 
     comply better with the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines. This is
     an ongoing effort and the interface may still be inconsistent in
     a few places.

   * Users are now allowed to clear the undo history.

   * The unit to be used for the rulers and the coordinates display is now
     a display property and can be changed in the statusbar of the image
     window.

   * New widgets and frameworks provided by GTK+ 2.4 are used; this means

     + uses the new GtkFileChooser dialog, vastly improving the file
       dialogs.
     + includes port of menus to GtkUIManager, which creates all core
       menus from XML files at runtime. This means that menu items can
       be rearranged by users simply by editing these files.
     + uses a global accelerator table in all docks and image windows.
       This means that a hotkey will do the same thing regardless of
       which dock or image window you are using.
     + adds replacement widgets based on GtkComboBox for most uses of
       GtkOptionMenu (GimpUnitMenu remains to be ported)
     + adds GimpContainerEntry, a GtkEntry with completion based on
       the contents of a GimpContainer.
     + makes the order and visibility of tools in the toolbox configurable
     + allows keeping toolbox and dock windows above other windows (if
       the WM supports this hint)

   * The toolbox now has an optional preview of the active image.

   * The image window now accepts file/uri drops.

 - More internal cleanup and refactoring of the core object model.

 - The brush rendering code has been separated from the generic paint
   tool code. The ink tool is now a paint tool (it can do straight
   lines) and the new infrastructure allows to implement new kinds of
   paint methods like vector based painting.

 - Gradients can now be created, deleted, renamed and edited through
   the PDB.

 - Some changes to plug-ins.

   * Plug-ins can now register the same procedures in multiple places (the
     API to register menu entries has been changed in a backward-compatible 
     fashion).

   * Plug-ins can now optionally register a menu icon.

   * File plug-ins can now register a mime-type.

   * All plug-in dialogs have been reviewed and changed to make them
     comply better with the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines.

   * All plug-ins that need to access files use the new GtkFileChooser
     dialog.

   * The obsolete AlienMap and GIcon plug-ins were removed.  AlienMap2
     does everything than AlienMap did, and the GIMP-specific GIcon format
     has not been used by anything for quite some time now.

   * A plug-in to load and save windows icon files has been added.


Contributors:

   Michael Natterer, Sven Neumann, Maurits Rijk, Manish Singh,
   Henrik Brix Andersen, Philip Lafleur, Raphael Quinet, Simon Budig,
   William Skaggs, Shlomi Fish, Kevin, Cozens, Jakub Steiner, Dave Neary,
   Daniel Kobras, Jordi Gay, Yeti, Marco Munari, David Necas, Nils
   Philippsen, Soeren Wedel Nielsen, Joao S. O. Bueno, lots of translators
   and the contributors that I accidentally missed...