Hi,

it's about seven weeks since we branched the CVS tree and there is now a first development snapshot of GIMP 2.1 available from ftp.gimp.org and it's mirrors:

http://gimp.org/downloads/#mirrors

This is an unstable development release. It certainly has bugs and there are a number of unfinished hacks. We are nevertheless interested in your feedback and would like you to file bug reports for crashes and non-obvious problems.

Please note that you cannot install gimp-2.1 side-by-side with gimp-2.0 into the same prefix. A number of files will clash, so please use a separate prefix to install this development version! For details, please read the file INSTALL.

Also, please do not distribute binary packages of gimp-2.1. We are aiming for a gimp-2.2 release in a few months, so please wait for gimp-2.2.

Here's an overview of changes since GIMP 2.0:

GIMP 2.1 includes the following enhancements:

- Major user interface improvements.

* Large parts of the GIMP user interface have been changed to comply better with the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines. This is an ongoing effort and the interface may still be inconsistent in a few places.

* Users are now allowed to clear the undo history.

* The unit to be used for the rulers and the coordinates display is now a display property and can be changed in the statusbar of the image window.

* New widgets and frameworks provided by GTK+ 2.4 are used; this means

+ uses the new GtkFileChooser dialog, vastly improving the file dialogs.
+ includes port of menus to GtkUIManager, which creates all core menus from XML files at runtime. This means that menu items can be rearranged by users simply by editing these files. + uses a global accelerator table in all docks and image windows. This means that a hotkey will do the same thing regardless of which dock or image window you are using. + adds replacement widgets based on GtkComboBox for most uses of GtkOptionMenu (GimpUnitMenu remains to be ported) + adds GimpContainerEntry, a GtkEntry with completion based on the contents of a GimpContainer. + makes the order and visibility of tools in the toolbox configurable + allows keeping toolbox and dock windows above other windows (if the WM supports this hint)

* The toolbox now has an optional preview of the active image.

* The image window now accepts file/uri drops.

- More internal cleanup and refactoring of the core object model.

- The brush rendering code has been separated from the generic paint tool code. The ink tool is now a paint tool (it can do straight lines) and the new infrastructure allows to implement new kinds of paint methods like vector based painting.

- Gradients can now be created, deleted, renamed and edited through the PDB.

- Some changes to plug-ins.

* Plug-ins can now register the same procedures in multiple places (the API to register menu entries has been changed in a backward-compatible fashion).

* Plug-ins can now optionally register a menu icon.

* File plug-ins can now register a mime-type.

* All plug-in dialogs have been reviewed and changed to make them comply better with the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines.

* All plug-ins that need to access files use the new GtkFileChooser dialog.

* The obsolete AlienMap and GIcon plug-ins were removed. AlienMap2 does everything than AlienMap did, and the GIMP-specific GIcon format has not been used by anything for quite some time now.

* A plug-in to load and save windows icon files has been added.

Contributors:

Michael Natterer, Sven Neumann, Maurits Rijk, Manish Singh, Henrik Brix Andersen, Philip Lafleur, Raphael Quinet, Simon Budig, William Skaggs, Shlomi Fish, Kevin, Cozens, Jakub Steiner, Dave Neary, Daniel Kobras, Jordi Gay, Yeti, Marco Munari, David Necas, Nils Philippsen, Soeren Wedel Nielsen, Joao S. O. Bueno, lots of translators and the contributors that I accidentally missed...

Happy GIMPing!