Hi,

we are getting closer to the 2.2 release but there's still a lot of things that need to be done. This mail will focus on stuff that should be done for GIMP 2.2 but doesn't need any programming skills. For that reason I am also addressing the gimp-user list here. We are looking for contributions on the following tasks:

(1) We will probably want to have a press-release to announce GIMP 2.2. This is a rather large task but it can be split up into a couple of smaller things:

- Collect a list of changes since GIMP 2.0. This should focus on user-visible changes.

- Collect screenshots of the development version. We can first use those for http://developer.gimp.org/screenshots.html and pick some nice ones for the press release then.

- Prepare a list of recipients for the press release.

- Actually write it and prepare a HTML and a PDF version of it.

(2) Review and complete the API reference manuals. This will probably need some programming skills but some simple proof-reading would already help a lot. We have tried to keep the API reference manuals uptodate during development. We did however often only add stubs. What's missing here is at least some short introductions into all the new sections that have been added.

I will try to upload an uptodate snapshot of the docs at http://developer.gimp.org/api/2.0/ later today. It would be very nice if we could find a volunteer who could help us to improve the docs for 2.2. If you are interested, please let me know.

(3) It would be nice to see a chapter added to the API reference that deals with changes between GIMP 2.0 and GIMP 2.2 and how to port a plug-in. I am willing to collect the list of changes and such but I'd like to get some help with this.

(4) As you already know, the gimp-help project is looking for more contributors. The more help content we can get written for 2.2, the better.

(5) As always we need people testing the pre-releases that we will start to roll out soon.

There's certainly things I forgot. Please tell me about them.

Sven

Hi,

Simon Budig writes:

(3) It would be nice to see a chapter added to the API reference that deals with changes between GIMP 2.0 and GIMP 2.2 and how to port a plug-in. I am willing to collect the list of changes and such but I'd like to get some help with this.

Compile me a list and I'll do it. I also need some advice on where to put this in the devel-docs.

I'd like to see something similar to http://developer.gnome.org/doc/API/2.0/gtk/migrating.html. Of course it doesn't need to be as comprehensive. The GTK+ developers also started with a smaller chapter...

I am not really sure where to put this since we have a bunch of API manuals. Probably best to put it to the libgimp manual since that's what most plug-in authors will look at and libgimp/libgimpui is using the other libraries. So it could just become a new chapter in http://developer.gimp.org/api/2.0/libgimp/

Now let's try to collect a list of changes. It is probably a good idea to talk about GTK+-2.4 and to point to http://developer.gnome.org/doc/API/2.0/gtk/migrating.html. Then there are a couple of new widgets that we introduced:

- GimpIntComboBox replaces the gimp_int_option_menu_new() constructor. - GimpFrame can help to make plug-in dialogs HIG-conform. - GimpColorHexEntry is the fancy color entry used in the color selector. - GimpCellRendererToggle is what we use for example in the Layers dialogs to draw the eye toggle button. - GimpPreviewArea is a GtkPreview replacement that also deals with all image types GIMP knows about and can render a checkerboard to visualize transparency.
- GimpPreview is an abstract base class only and is used by the new GimpDrawablePreview and GimpAspectPreview (in libgimpui).

Besides the new previews, libgimpui has a couple of other additions:

- gimppixbuf.h provides an easy way to get image and drawable thumbnails as GdkPixbufs.
- gimimagecombobox.h and gimpdrawablecombobox.h have replacements for the now deprecated functions in gimpmenu.h. - gimpprogress.h deals with the new GimpProgress API, the GimpProgressBar widget hides this complexity from the plug-in author.

libgimp has seen an API cleanup as well. Quite a lot of the brush/gradient/pattern/palette functions have been deprecated and new saner APIs have been added. The GimpContext namespace is completely new and gimp_context_push/pop should definitely be mentioned. It is especially useful for script developers.

The best way to list all new functions is to grep for the word "Since" in the .c files. We've marked all new functions with "Since: GIMP 2.2".

Prototypes of deprecated functions are in GIMP_DISABLE_DEPRECATED guards. It would certainly be nice to explain how to use this define to write clean code that uses only the new APIs. Would probably be good to also mention the --pdb-compat-mode command-line option.

That should be more than enough to get you started...

Sven

Hi,

Cai Qian writes:

(2) Review and complete the API reference manuals. This will probably need some programming skills but some simple proof-reading would already help a lot. We have tried to keep the API reference manuals uptodate during development. We did however often only add stubs. What's missing here is at least some short introductions into all the new sections that have been added.

I will try to upload an uptodate snapshot of the docs at http://developer.gimp.org/api/2.0/ later today. It would be very nice if we could find a volunteer who could help us to improve the docs for 2.2. If you are interested, please let me know.

I am quite interested about this, I have some programming skills in C and GTK, but am not quite familiar with GIMP code. So I want to know if that ok, or how to start?

I've uploaded the current state of the docs to http://developer.gimp.org/api/2.0/. There's a lot of room for improvements here and I don't really care where you would want to start. One of the things I'd like to see being done is to make sure that each section has at least a short description. If you have a look at for example http://developer.gimp.org/api/2.0/libgimp/ you will notice that quite a few sections lack this short description. That would perhaps be a good start.

About the technical details: The API reference manuals are created using gtk-doc. The docs are located in the devel-docs directory of the GIMP source tree. There's a README.gtkdoc in there which tries to explain the concepts of gtk-doc. If you have further questions, please let me know.

To get back to the example I gave above. In order to fix the problem of the missing descriptions, you would edit the file devel-docs/libgimp/tmpl/gimpbrush.sgml and fill in the missing bits at the top where it says:

Editing the API reference manual is pretty much straight-forward. You need almost no knowledge of Docbook/XML. It does however help to have some experience writing GIMP plug-ins. But of course you can always ask and this might be a good way to learn the GIMP API.

Sven

Hi,

Cai Qian writes:

Where can I download the current version of the docs? Is it in CVS or ftp://ftp.gimp.org/pub/gimp/v2.1/

Oh, sorry, I thought that was obvious. The docs are in the GIMP source tree (of course since large parts are generated from the source code) in the devel-docs directory.

Sven