gimp/TODO

Please add things to this file when the need to do them is
discovered. Explanations of why or how this would be useful are
even better. Insight into possible ways to implement are even better
than that.

This is really intended to be a list of stuff thats potentially bolted
onto the current codebase (i.e. gimp 1.3), rather than in gimp 2.0.

===================================================================

For the pixmap/hose stuff:

	add a "pipe edit" option to the brush dialog so we can
	call up a hose editor (to reorder images, scale them, etc)

A few GUI things suggestions...

   1) Crop tool could have an optional shader for the outside area
      so when you crop, the area outside would show in a darker color /
      user definable color / black / white etc.. (maybe a selector for
      the outside area:                  ____________ 
                         Outside fill: [|_none_______| = ]
                                        |.black......|
                                        |.white......|
                                        |.user def...|
                                        |.shade 50%..|
                                        `------------'
      That would be very handy for cropping scanned photos etc - 
      one would see the result much easier apart from the rest.

gui/functionality separation

	both file scope wise and in use, particulary so that
	the gui version of the tool uses the pdb whenever possible
	(for finding bugs, and for macro recording)

	May be a good idea to actually put the core and the gui in
	separate subdirectories.  --sg

more configurabilty (eek)

	I would like to be able to let the user stick arbitrary
	buttons into the toolbox and attach arbitrary functions to
	them.  --sg

	What about a second button-bar? We dont have icons  to add to the  
	main toolbar  anyway,  so it would  be hard to  distinguish  what
	button does  what (they are small -> text wont fit). 
	Look at my mockup:
		http://tigert.gimp.org/files/temp/wilber_palette.gif
	It might work in such way that 
	   1. you click add -> new button
	   2. then right click  on it -> you would get the normal <Image>-menu 
              (like when clicking right mousebutton over an image) from which  
              you could select  the plugin/tool  to assign to this button. 
 	   3. To apply  the thing  to an  image you  first  click  on the 
	      button and the  statusbar would  show something like 'click 
	      on an image to  apply function xxxx' ->  click an  image to
	      assign the tool an image and apply it.
	Now this is just an idea, but  it might solve the 'which image do
	we want to apply things to? -problem.
	Also  see http://www.home.unix-ag.org/simon/gimp/gimpbuttons.html
	Simon Budig  has an experiment  similar  to this.  Maybe it would
	make sense to implement something like this?
								--tigert 

fix stuff so that the tile size could actually be changed eventually

	Currently gimp core is mostly setup to use a potentially
	variable tilesize, but lots of plugins and some internal stuff
	are hardcoded to expect 64x64 tiles. This is good for 8-bit
	images on x86, but with potential of deep images and other
	platforms, having this variable could be a real gain in
	performance tweaking.  

	This will be hard because the XCF file format assumes 64x64
	tiles.  XCF load/save will have to be written to retile
	images, or the XCF file format redesigned.  --sg

previews in file save (for jpeg compression, etc):

	Currently there is no easy way to see the effects of
	compression or other image saving effects before actually
	saving and reloading an image.

keybindings for simple "binary" tools:

	(for ex, flip should flip horiz normal, and shift+click to
	shift vertically). The more that can be done by power-users
	without having to delve through dialogs the better.  This is
	mostly implemented already.

curve deal in the gradient editor?:

	It could be useful to have a curve widget for each of the
	color channels or hsv. For example, you have a custom palette
	you like, but you want it to get dark from left to right. You
	pop up the "Value" curve and make a curve getting darker.

	(Note: this would require a complete rewrite of the gradient
	_engine_, not just the editor. --sg)

some degree of drawing tools, straight line, etc:

	Perhaps large parts of gfig could be salvaged for this. Its
	not something "paint" programs traditionaly do, but there
	usefulnes is obvious. square/circle/ellipse are already there
	basically (just make a wrapper to select and stroke). need a
	better straigh line drawing ui though.

Macro recording and better scripting support:

	This pretty much is going to require the aforementioned
	gui/func seperation. More stuff needs to be triggered via pdb
	to make thsi a possibilty.

More Xinput stuff ( gradient brushes, pen "strokes" ?):

	This is very important for "artist" types. The more
	value-added utility we can make for Xinput stuff the better.

Redesign of the Blend Tool dialog? (it's rather large...)

"Fit text to selection": 

	make selection, scale text to fit it... A suggestion from
	Xach, Perhaps instead of rendering the text and font size
	exactly, make a bounding box of it, then scale the bounding
	box as approriate. When the box size is chosen, figure out the
	best-fit font size and render it.

	instead of rendering into a preview, render preview directly
	onto the image. 

	(Text should be redone entirely, with a native T1/TTF
	interpreter.  Using X to render text is cheap but nasty. --sg)

	Done via a perl script hack, but would be nicer in core/extension 
	-sjb

progress bars on long proccesses:

	Currently, long-term ops like blend run from a recursive event
	loop, not the idle loop like they should.  This should be cleaned up a
	little. -- Austin.

"open into layer" and new image from cut buffer stuff should perhaps
be in core?:

	This would be "Paste into New" and/or "Copy to New". Should be
	simple. Theres a script to do this, but the functionailty is
	so simple it perhaps would be best to do in core.

Automagically guess whats a good tilecache size:

	Not sure how to do this. Suggestions are offered in the
	install.

BETTER FONT SUPPORT! 

	even if we have to go around X. and a better font selector
	too. Perhaps the new gtk font selector could be used. It seems
	handy. The actual support may require integration of type1lib
	or freetype or similar. Probabaly be an extension, gimp could
	fall back to X font rendering if need be.

	Refresh font list while running.

	(There's a good argument for making all text operations run
	thru an extension. --sg)

	See gimp-freetype for exciting work on going around X!

ability to get an exact count of the total number of colors in the
image:

	Xpm plugin has an algo to do this. Perhaps it should be in the
	core.

indexed/color reducing to arbitrary number of colors:

	Current convert.c is limited to indexing to 8-bit palettes or
	less.  Dont know what would be involved in making it work for
	larger palettes. convert.c has some deep magic involved in it,
	so who knows.

	(Related: indexed images with more than 8 bits depth.  --sg)

Folding box for the toolbar:

	Done, but a bit buggy on some boxes still?
	
optimize transform_core (special cases, fft stuff?, optimizations only
raph understands, etc...)

brush-shaped cursors:

	Possible solutions, generate cursors on the fly, use shaped
	pixmaps, possibly just draw directly on the preview, any other
	ideas?  Raphs caanvas might offer the oppurtunity to do this
	in color and anti-aliased.

active brushes:
	Use module system to dynamically load new brush types, eg
	Raph's(?) watercolour brushes, pixmap brushes, or image hose
	style brushes.  Need to define a proper API for hooking.
	Maybe really want to define new tool types, rather than new brush
	types.

let pdb stuff register under the layers_dialog menu:

	Lots of potential in scripts to do layer/channel manip.  Might
	as well let them register on those menus.

some sort of mdi for dialogs so you could tab them together or
pull them apart:

	Would be nice to be able to pile all the dialogs into one big
	notebook.  

make color picker able to choose from any color on the screen. 

	This sounds really simple. Any idea how to actually do it?

big cad style cross-hairs cursor:
	guides come close, but we probabaly dont wont somethign like
	that again.

some sort of image/drawable locking:
	so we don't munge images by doing >1 ops on them at once.
	For plugins in particular, may also simplifie some of the tool
	redesign.

Suggestion from Ville Hautamaki (CW): 
	Pattern groups
	Especially once patterns are demand-loaded. It would be
	very conveint to say "load all the wood patterns",
	or even just "set 1" etc.

Have a "Preview" button too that performs the transformation 
without interpolation:
	As it stands, transforms can be very slow and feedback to the
	user is small. A preiview would save much time and make the action
	more accururate.

Selections should be transformable:
	(e.g. rotate an elliptical selection; the selection, not it's
	content!!).
	This shouldnt be too hard. Perhaps just need to add the hooks
	for the selection info (usually in TileManager structs) to
	be passed to the existent image ops. 
	
Have a possibility to add a text as selection:
	If selections would be editable as described above, we'd 
	then have editable vector-text. 

	See the bezier option in gimp-freetype!

Option to create New Indexed image (with the choice of pattern foo) ?

Integrate gimp-16 stuff?
	Probably won't happen, though some good ideas we could steal 
	have come out of that - in particular, a clone tool that lets
	you rotate before writing to destination is a nifty idea.
	
	see http://film.gimp.org/

Make file load/save errors not worthy of existence.

	Right now the errors from the file plugins pop
	up in weird places, at weird times, and are often
	basically useless. This is bad.

Code to set built in icons or icon path?

	Is this the wm's job or soemthing internal?  Could be nice for
	plug-ins to register an icon for internal use.

Action/active/Procedural Layers

	People seem to want them. For some ops it would be painfully
	easy. For alot of stuff i havent a clue. Anyone have a good plan
	on how to potentialy implement this?

generic preview code in libgimp for use by plugins

	All plugins should have a preview. it would be nice if there
	were code in libgimp to make this easier. Possibly just
	generalize a good exmaple of preview code (quartics?) and
	slap it in libgimp. Maybe throw some of the gck stuff in there
	too. Or possibly make a new plugin helper lib combining
	gck, megawidget, preview code, etc.

	"All" plugins might be too extreme.  Some plugins (autostretch 
	contrast) have little need for an interface, and exist IMHO 
	better w/o one.  Also, there are different needs for previews
	depending on the plug-in type, so a set of preview widgets
	would be a better solution.

named undo
	Each pushing of an undo operation should include a textual
	string for human consumption.  That way, the "undo" menu
	option can list exactly what will be undone.  Its sorta there,
	but could be more specific.

tools

	Make tools listen for gimage dirty signals to fix munging.
	When a tool caches image data privately, you need to reset
	when the image gets dirty.

Grid

	A gridding, and a snap to gridding. Basically a way of turning on 
        and off a grid, and setting the grid size. Then also a way of starting  
        to draw at a grid intersection and then end drawing at another 
        intersection.
				(this was suggested to me by email -- Sven)

"font" brush?

	a brush that could use chars rendered from fonts as the brush
	bitmap. limited utility for char's, but a couple of nice sets
	of winding fonts could make it interestings. And you could
	use words or strings.