GIMP 1.1 - New features -*- text -*- The following list tries to describe all the new features that are already implemented or currently being worked on. I cannot guarantee that I describe everything correctly, since for most items I haven't read the code but only looked at the ChangeLog entry. I can however guarantee that a few things are missing. Older items are on top, newer ones further down the list. At the end a few common things are listed. XInput support GIMP does now support special input devices like drawing tablets by default. It depends on the device being supported by your XServer. This is true for example for Wacom drawing tablets. Support for multiple devices, pressure and tilt sensitivity is slowly added to all paint tools. Ink tool A nice new toy that really comes to life if you have an extended input device as described above. If you don't happen to have a special device, Ink will vary its size based on the speed of your cursor. The results can be remarkably natural-looking. Smudge tool This tool lets you push pixels around on the image as if you were using your finger and "smudging" wet paint. Dodge & Burn tool This tool lets you selectively darken or lighten the image. Quick Mask With quick mask, you can quickly convert a selection to a visible red mask and back again. You can edit the mask directly with painting tools or plugins. Image selection thumbnails For dialogs that allow you to choose which image they're associated with, the menu now has a small thumbnail image to help you determine which image you're selecting. 'File New' dialog The new dialog for creating new images allows to use real life units like centimeters and inches along with a resolution entry. Hex display A small but nifty feature was added to the Color Picker: It know displays the HEX triplet of the selected color. Useful for WEB artists. Pop-up button The small rectangle between the rulers in the upper left corner of the image window now gives access to the menu. Useful for people with tablets or two-button mice. Status bar The image display know has a status bar. Plug-ins display their progress there and your mouse coordinates are displayed. Most tools use it too. The Selection tool for example shows the selection size while you drag. And don't worry, it's possible to hide the status bar to save screen estate. GUI enhancements Lots of nifty enhancements to the user interface. Spinbuttons are used in a lot of places. More stuff like that has to be added in the future... Session management GIMP remembers window positions and sizes and restores them on startup. Selections New algorithms are now used to grow and shrink the selection. The result looks much better! PDB interface A lot more internal functions are now exported to the PDB. This should for example allow the GIMP Animation Plugin to work without changes to the GIMP core. Better tile-caching Tiles are now more intelligently cached and a threaded process tries to swap out dirty tiles before you run out of physical memory. Copy On Write The MAD-COW patches that appeared too late to get integrated into GIMP-1.0 are now integrated. And...its FASTER!! Document Index The document index keeps track of the images you used with The GIMP. You can even drag in an image from a file-manager (GNOME MC for example). Editable Brushes Well, editable brushes still need some work, but the basics are there... Fixed size selections The size or the aspect ratio of selections can now be entered numerically as well. Script-Fu interface improvements The Script-Fu dialog now allows a whole bunch of entry widgets, like selectors for fonts, brushes, gradients and patterns. Strings can be entered without the nasty quotes and numerical entries can use sliders and spinbuttons. Most of the scripts were already updated. Quick Reference The Quick Reference sheet looks much better and holds more information. A must-have for your desktop. Transform Tool UI The user interface for the Transform tool has seen a major overhaul. It now offers a new 'Corrective' mode that for example makes it easy to correct slightly rotated scans. Color representation GIMP now uses GdkRGB to provide better dithering for non truecolor displays. This should also speed GIMP up a bit. Parasites Arbitrary data can be attached to an image and be retrieved later. Tattoos A unique stamp can be attached to drawables. That way a plug-in can easily keep track of layers. Dialogs A few dialogs can now be controlled via the PDB. That allows a plug-in to use the internal dialogs to select brushes, patterns and gradients. Idle-Renderer Display re-rendering is now handled in an interruptible asynchronous thread. This makes The GIMP more responsive especially when working with the Layers-dialog. Resolution support Each image now has a resolution associated with it. This needs to be integrated better into the GUI, but there are already a few file plug-ins that make use of this. GimpPerl The GIMP-Perl extension and several Perl-Fu scripts are now part of GIMP 1.1. Monitor resolution The image can now be displayed in float scale factors. If GIMP knows about your monitor resolution it displays one inch as one inch. Still needs some work... Help in the DB Browser The DB Browser now also display the help that is available for a lot of functions in the PDB. Internationalization National Language Support is coming! New plug-ins Various new plug-ins were added. More have appeared in the Registry and wait to be added or updated. A few nice ones that are now included: * WaterSelect - a nifty way to select colors * NewsPrint - whee, you have to see that * Guillotine - slices the image up along its guides * Unsharp Mask Internals Lots of changes were made to GIMP internals that I don't understand correctly, like objectification and removal of the image ID system. Read the ChangeLog yourself to figure this out. Plug-ins and Scripts Various plug-ins and scripts not mentioned above have been updated or fixed to work with changes in the GIMP core or GTK+. One day I might add a list of all changed plug-ins to this list... Color selectors An API has been added to allow the addition of any number of different color selection systems via pluggable modules. The GTK color selector and a triangle color selector have been added to the color selection dialog through this new system. Better feedback Internal operations that take a long time to complete (transforms, gradients, etc.) now display a progress bar and cursor change to inform the user about what's going on. Unit representation You can now work directly in inches, centimeters, millimeters, and other units without having to do pixel math to figure things out. Paths dialog Manipulating paths is much easier, and the Paths dialog is integrated into the Layers & Channels dialog. Paths are quite flexible and will soon replace the Bezier tool entirely. Thumbnails The Open dialog now displays a thumbnail if it exists, and gives the option to generate one if it doesn't. Indexed images Converting images from RGB to Indexed color has been improved. Win32 merging The patches required for compiling under Win32 are being integrated into the main GIMP source. Cursor changes The cursors now visually indicate selection modes. It's much easier to tell if you're adding, subtracting, or intersecting a selection now. Cursors also change depending on your Path mode. Miscellaneous - The painting functions (brush, pencil, airbrush, etc.) have been optimized, and a new painting option allows you to color with a gradient. - The GAP plugin, which has some essential animation features, is now integrated into GIMP. - The font selector has been redesigned. - The new, slightly incomplete MAINTAINERS file should help track responsibility and expertise for various GIMP parts. - There's now a man page for the gimprc file. - The titlebar layout can be customized to display information in various ways. Copyright 1998 by Sven Neumann Modified by Zach Beane