PARASITE REGISTRY - 1999-05-31 ================= This document is designed for the convenience of GIMP developers. It does not need to concern users. >>>> If your plugin or script writes parasites, please >>>> amend this file in CVS or submit patches to >>>> gimp-developer@scam.xcf.berkeley.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------ *** NAMESPACE Plug-in-specific data should be prefixed by the plug-in function name and a slash, i.e. private data of plug_in_displace should be named like: plug_in_displace/data1 plug_in_displace/data2 etc. Global data follows no strict rules. ------------------------------------------------------------------ *** KNOWN PREFIXES: "tiff" : The standard GIMP TIFF plugin "jpeg" : The standard GIMP JPEG plugin "gimp" : For common and standard parasites ------------------------------------------------------------------ *** KNOWN PARASITES: "gimp-comment" (IMAGE, PERSISTENT) Standard GIF-style image comments. This parasite should be human-readable text in UTF-8 encoding. A trailing \0 might be included and is not part of the comment. "gimp-brush-name" (IMAGE, PERSISTENT) A string in UTF-8 encoding specifying the name of a GIMP brush. Currently, the gbr plug-in uses this parasite when loading and saving .gbr files. A trailing \0 might be included and is not part of the name. "gimp-brush-pipe-parameters" (IMAGE, PERSISTENT) This is all very preliminary: A string, containing parameters describing how an brush pipe should be used. The contents is a space-separated list of keywords and values. The keyword and value are separated by a colon. This parasite is currently attached to an image by the psp plug-in when it loads a .tub file (Paint Shop Pro picture tube). It is used (first attached with values asked from the user, if nonexistent) by the gpb plug-in when it saves a .gih file. The .gih file contains the same text in it. The keywords are: ncells: the number of brushes in the brush pipe step: the default spacing for the pipe dim: the dimension of the pipe. The number of cells in the pipe should be equal to the product of the ranks of each dimension. cols: number of columns in each layer of the image, to be used when editing the pipe as a GIMP image rows: ditto for rows. Note that the number of columns and rows not necessarily are identical to the ranks of the dimensions of a pipe, but in the case of two- and three-dimensional pipes, it probably is. rank0, rank1, ...: (one for each dimension): the index range for that dimension placement: "default", "constant" or "random". "constant" means use the spacing in the first brush in the pipe. "random" means perturb that with some suitable random number function. (Hmm, would it be overdoing it if the pipe also could specify what random function and its parameters...?) sel0, sel1, ...: "default", "random", "incremental", "angular", "pressure", "velocity", and whatever else suitable we might think of ;-) Determines how one index from each dimension is selected (until we have pinpointed the brush to use). "gimp-image-grid" (IMAGE, PERSISTENT) The GimpGrid object serialized to a string. Saved as parasite to keep the XCF files backwards compatible. Although gimp-1.2 does not know how to handle the image grid, it keeps the grid information intact. "gimp-pattern-name" (IMAGE, PERSISTENT) A string in UTF-8 encoding specifying the name of a GIMP pattern. Currently, the pat plug-in uses this parasite when loading and saving .pat files. A trailing \0 might be included and is not part of the name. "gimp-text-layer" (LAYER, PERSISTENT) The associated GimpText object serialized to a string. For convenience the string is terminated by a trailing '\0'. The idea of using a parasite for text layers is to keep the XCF files backward compatible. Although gimp-1.2 doesn't know how to handle the text layer, it keeps the parasite intact. "tiff-save-options" (IMAGE) The TiffSaveVals structure from the TIFF plugin. "jpeg-save-options" (IMAGE) The JpegSaveVals structure from the JPEG plugin. "jpeg-exif-data" (IMAGE) The ExifData structure serialized into a uchar* blob from libexif. This is deprecated in favor of "exif-data". "png-save-defaults" (GLOBAL, PERSISTENT) Default save parameters used by the PNG plug-in. "gamma" (IMAGE, PERSISTENT) The original gamma this image was created/saved. For JPEG; this is always one, for PNG it's usually taken from the image data. GIMP might use and modify this. The format is an ascii string with the gamma exponent as a flotingpoint value. Example: for sRGB images this might contain "0.45454545" "chromaticity" (IMAGE, PERSISTENT) This parasite contains 8 floatingpoint values (ascii, seperated by whitespace) specifying the x and y coordinates of the whitepoint, the red, green and blue primaries, in this order. Example: for sRGB images this might contain "0.3127 0.329 0.64 0.33 0.3 0.6 0.15 0.06" wx wy rx ry gx gy bx by "rendering-intent" (IMAGE, PERSISTENT) This specifies the rendering intent of the image. It's a value between 0 and 3, again in ascii: 0 - perceptual (e.g. for photographs) 1 - relative colorimetric (e.g. for logos) 2 - saturation-preserving (e.g. for business charts) 3 - absolute colorimetric "/_fu_data" (GLOBAL, IMAGE, DRAWABLE, PERSISTENT) The Gimp::Fu module might store the arguments of the last plug-in invocation. It is usually attached to images, but might also be found globally. The data format is either pure character data (Data::Dumper) or a serialized data stream created by Storable::nfreeze. "hot-spot" (IMAGE, PERSISTENT) Use this parasite to store an image's "hot spot". Currently used by the XBM plugin to store mouse cursor hot spots. Example: a hot spot at coordinates (5,5) is stored as "5 5" "exif-data" (IMAGE, PERSISTENT) The ExifData structure serialized into a character array by libexif (using exif_data_save_data). "exif-orientation-rotate" (GLOBAL, PERSISTENT) Whether a load plug-in should automatically rotate the image according to the orientation specified in the EXIF data. This has values "yes" or "no". If the parasite is not set, the plug-in should ask the user what to do. "icc-profile" (IMAGE, PERSISTENT) This contains an ICC profile describing the color space the image was produced in. TIFF images stored in PhotoShop do oftentimes contain embedded profiles. An experimental color manager exists to use this parasite, and it will be used for interchange between TIFF and PNG (identical profiles) "icc-profile-name" (IMAGE, PERSISTENT) The profile name is a convenient name for referring to the profile. It is for example used in the PNG file format. The name must be stored in UTF-8 encoding. If a file format uses a different character encoding, it must be converted to UTF-8 for use as a parasite. "decompose-data" (IMAGE, NONPERSISTENT) Starting with GIMP 2.3, this is added to images produced by the decompose plug-in, and contains information necessary to recompose the original source RGB layer from the resulting grayscale layers. It is ascii; a typical example would be "source=2 type=RGBA 4 5 6 7". This means that layer 2 was decomposed in RGBA mode, giving rise to layers 4, 5, 6, and 7. "gfig" (LAYER, PERSISTENT) As of GIMP 2.2, the gfig plug-in creates its own layers, and stores a representation of the figure as a layer parasite. The parasite contains a GFig save file, in an ascii format. If gfig is started while the active layer contains a "gfig" parasite, the contents of the parasite are loaded at startup. ------------------------------------------------------------------ *** PARASITE FORMAT: The parasite data format is not rigidly specified. For non-persistant parasites you are entirely free, as the parasite data does not survive the current gimp session. If you need persistant data, you basically have to choose between the following alternatives (also, having some standard for non-persistant data might be fine as well): - cook your own binary data format You can invent your own data format. This means that you will either loose totally (consider endian-ness or version-ness issues) or you will get yourself into deep trouble to get it "right" in all cases. - use character (string) data Obvious to perl people but less so to C programmers: just sprintf your data into a string (e.g. "SIZE 100x200 XRES 300 YRES 300") and store that in the parasite, and later sscanf it again. This often solves most of the problems you might encounter, makes for easier debugging and more robustness (consider the case when you add more entries to your persistant data: older plug-ins might be able to read the relevant parts and your application can detect missing fields easily). The drawback is that your data is likely to be larger than a compact binary representation would be. Not much a problem for most applications, though. You could also use one parasite per field you store, i.e. foo-size, foo-offset-x, foo-offset-y etc... - use the libgimp serialize functions NOTE: libgimp/gserialize.[ch] has been excluded from the build since gimp-1.2. This decision was made since noone seemed to use it so far. The files can still be pulled out of CVS, so if you decide to use them, you will have to include a copy into your plugin source or resurrect the functionality in libgimp. Look at the stuff in libgimp/gserialize.h. These functions allow for relatively easy serializing/deserializing of structs. The advantages are that the gimp-developers have already taken care of endian-ness issues and other hazzles. The drawback is that you might encounter problems when you want to extend your structures later, as you have to be prepared for images saved with parasites form a very old version of your plug-in, and the gserialize functions do not handle different data formats nicely itself. One way out around this is to prefix your data with a version identifier (remember to use a guchar, i.e. something without endian-ness problems). Remember to skip it before deserializing. Another very easy way is to add a version tag to your parasite name, i.e. "foo-bar-v1", "foo-bar-v2". Your plug-in could then check for older versions and act accordingly and/or attach the new parasite or both the new and the old version of your data. The gserialize stuff also makes it possible to just append more fields (i.e. more gserialized structs) to your data. You could check the length of the parasite data ("anything left?") to decide wether to decode more fields. Here's some example: data = parasite_data(p); size = parasite_data_size(p); length = gdeserialize(...); tlength += length; data += length; if (tlength != size) gdeserialize the next one, etc.