Hello, I'm using GIMP-1.2.5 under Linux. Is it possible to start the GIMP-Perl server from command line? (As I earlier mentioned, I'd like to run a Perl-Fu script and as I experienced, I have about 60% of speedup on a 256 MB RAM, 600 MHz PC machine if I start GIMP-Perl server first from GIMP, but in the future I should start the GIMP-Perl server automagically, e.g. on booting Linux.)

Thank you in advance.

Zoltan

On 16 Jun 2004, Vegard Vesterheim wrote:

On Wed, 16 Jun 2004 13:41:55 +0200 (CEST) kovzol wrote:

Hello, I'm using GIMP-1.2.5 under Linux. Is it possible to start the GIMP-Perl server from command line?

Sure, do something like this:

gimp -i -b '(extension-perl-server 0 0 0)'&

I guess I need this. Thanks! :-)

(As I earlier mentioned, I'd like to run a Perl-Fu script and as I experienced, I have about 60% of speedup on a 256 MB RAM, 600 MHz PC machine if I start GIMP-Perl server first from GIMP, but in the future I should start the GIMP-Perl server automagically, e.g. on booting Linux.)

AFAIK Gimp 1.2 still needs access to a X server for font rendering. To implement a 'headless Gimp server', you could use Xvfb.

I already use it. Indeed, this is a needed issue. :-)

Gimp 2.0.X does font rendering on the client side, no X server required. Might be a better solution.

I had many hours of headache figuring the right solution out to write my own code in Gimp-Perl --- I was browsing the internet a lot, but there were many versions of the same statements in Gimp-Perl with different syntax. :-( So I'm also afraid that my script will be incompatible with 2.0.x --- that's why I don't really want to upgrade yet. :-)

Dynamic web graphics using a 'Gimp server' for 'on-the-fly rendering' is pretty cool stuff. Speed is often an issue, so caching the rendering results might be a good idea. I implemented something like this a couple of years ago, when graphic rendering of textual content (menu buttons, etc) was fashionable ;-).

We're traveling on the same train, I guess... :-) I also did the same thing in WebMathematics Interactive (http://www.sf.net) and this stuff I want to do now is exactly for this software, too. :-)

A last question, however it should be clear after a short time: may I run

$ gimp -i -b '(extension-perl-server 0 0 0)' -display :1 &

or something like this to force gimp-perl-server to run on a different X (namely Xvfb)?

Thanks a lot.

Regards, Zoltan

On 17 Jun 2004, Sven Neumann wrote:

Hi,

kovzol writes:

Illegal default font description for perl_fu_mysite_buttons: -*-luxi sans-medium-r-*-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-2

GIMP doesn't use X Logical Font Descriptors any longer, so please change this to "Sans Medium".

Thank you for your help! I changed this to the needed font. The only problem is if I want to use accented letters, I run into an error:

wmi@wmi:~/cvs/wmi/ui> ./oval-buttons.pl -font_size_pixels 11 -text_string "This works."
wmi@wmi:~/cvs/wmi/ui> ./oval-buttons.pl -font_size_pixels 11 -text_string Unmöglich.
oval-buttons.pl: gimp_text_get_extents_fontname: procedural database execution failed at ./oval-buttons.pl line 64 (DIE)

By the way, why must I define font_size_pixels? Without it I get into another error:

wmi@wmi:~/cvs/wmi/ui> ./oval-buttons.pl -text_string Unmöglich oval-buttons.pl: Unable to convert a reference to type 'FLOAT' at ./oval-buttons.pl line 64 (DIE)

oval-buttons.pl: Expected an INT32 but got 'BG_IMAGE_FILL'. Add '*1' if you really intend to pass in a string at ./oval-buttons.pl line 110 (DIE)

Please update your enums, this should be BACKGROUND_FILL instead of BG_IMAGE_FILL. Have a look at gimpcompat.h that documents these changes.

Sometimes it helps, sometimes not. Sorry to say, but I didn't find an accurate, updated, fresh documentation about the syntax of the Gimp-Perl (2.0) statements. Is there any?

A last note: I didn't even have to run Perl-Server within Gimp to run my script reasonably fast:

wmi@wmi:~/cvs/wmi/ui> time ./oval-buttons.pl -font_size_pixels 11 -text_string Fast

real 0m0.609s
user 0m0.080s
sys 0m0.000s

Congratulations for this speedup (it's about 7 times faster than gimp-1.2.5 did)! However, server mode run fails on gimp_display_new():

wmi@wmi:~/cvs/wmi/ui> gimp -i -b '(extension-perl-server 0 0 0)'& [1] 2633
wmi@wmi:~/cvs/wmi/ui> 1087502556: server version 2 started 1087502556: accepting connections on /tmp/gimp-perl-serv-uid-503/gimp-perl-serv wmi@wmi:~/cvs/wmi/ui> ./oval-buttons.pl -font_size_pixels 11 -text_string Fast 1087502561: accepted unix connection oval-buttons.pl: gimp_display_new: procedural database execution failed at ./oval-buttons.pl line 144 (DIE)
[Invalid UTF-8] Kiszolgáló: oval-buttons.pl: gimp_display_new: procedural database execution failed at ./oval-buttons.pl line 144 (DIE)

wmi@wmi:~/cvs/wmi/ui> 1087502561: closing connection 9 (136 requests in 0 seconds)

Am I using gimp_display_new() in a wrong way? But during standalone run it works well... Why?

TIA, Zoltan

[Invalid UTF-8] Kiszolgáló: oval-buttons.pl: gimp_display_new: procedural database execution failed at ./oval-buttons.pl line 144 (DIE)

wmi@wmi:~/cvs/wmi/ui> 1087502561: closing connection 9 (136 requests in 0 seconds)

Am I using gimp_display_new() in a wrong way? But during standalone run it works well... Why?

If I cut lines 144 and 145, then it works OK:

wmi@wmi:~/cvs/wmi/ui> time ./oval-buttons.pl -font_size_pixels 11 -text_string Fast
1087503061: accepted unix connection 1087503061: closing connection 9 (133 requests in 0 seconds)

real 0m0.132s user 0m0.090s
sys 0m0.000s

This is really nice (another 4 times of speedup). However, it would be great if I will be able to decide if gimp_display_new() is prohibited to run or not (within the script), i.e. to know if my script was called without any parameters.

TIA, Zoltan