NEWS

The GNU Image Manipulation Program Version 2.1
----------------------------------------------

This is the development branch of The GIMP. Here's where new features
are being added. Very soon now, the next stable GIMP release, GIMP 2.2,
will emerge out of this.


Overview of Changes in GIMP 2.1.7
=================================

- Added even more plug-in previews (Value Propagate, Cubism, Colorify)
  and ported existing previews to the new widgets (AlienMap2, FlareFX,
  Jigsaw, NL Filter, Waves, Scatter HSV).

- More PDB API cleanups.

- Allow to specify the batch interpreter on the command-line.

- Improved selection-round script and moved it to the Select menu.

- Don't switch the active layer when using the Move tool.

- Updated libgimpthumb to support local thumbnails as introduced by
  version 0.7 of the thumbnail spec.

- Automatically create thumbnails from the Open dialog.

- Added entries next to most viewable buttons.

- Added a bunch of scripts to manipulate guides.

- Improved confirmation and warning dialogs.

- Lots of bug fixes.


Contributors:

   Michael Natterer, Sven Neumann, David Odin, Manish Singh, Kevin Cozens,
   Alan Horkan, Jakub Steiner



Overview of Changes in GIMP 2.1.6
=================================

- Added more drawable previews (Color Exchange, DOG, Deinterlace,
  Engrave, Oilify, Ripple, Shift).

- Added new preview widget that shows a scaled view of the full
  drawable. Use it for Apply Lens, Blinds, Channel Mixer, Destripe,
  Emboss, Illusion, Map Color, Max RGB, Plasma, Polar, Solid Noise,
  Supernova, Whirl and Pinch.

- Added "Open as Layer" functionality to the menus.

- Implemented the recent-file-spec for shared storage of a list of
  recently used files (really URIs).

- Cleaned up plug-in procedure handling. Added the possibility to let
  plug-ins and scripts run using a private GimpContext.

- Added multi-line text entries for Script-Fu and Gimp-Python.

- Cleaned up PDB API for brushes, gradients, palettes and patterns.
  Deprecated lots of functions and added saner replacements. Added
  gimp-context-* PDB namespace with replacements for some of the 
  deprecated stuff.

- Let GimpView handle pixbuf previews. Added a (themable) drop shadow
  to image-file previews.

- Cleaned up the dbbrowser and plugindetails code and GUI and factored
  out common code. Renamed both executables and menu entries.

- Made tools cancelable with <Escape>.

- Dim the outer (to be cropped) area when using the Crop tool.

- Let GimpDialog add a help button to give easier access to the help pages.


Contributors:

   Michael Natterer, Sven Neumann, David Odin, Maurits Rijk, Dave Neary,
   Manish Singh, Robert Oegren, Kevin Cozens, Kevin Turner, Dov Grobgeld,
   Joao S. O. Bueno,  Michael Schumacher, Jonathan Levi, Daniel Egger



Overview of Changes in GIMP 2.1.5
=================================

- Ask the user to save the image when closing the last display.

- Restored compatibility of the wire protocol that was accidentally
  broken in 2.1.4.

- Added layer and mask actions to allow to create keybindings for them.

- Preview widget improvements:
   * let the preview expand with the plug-in dialog
   * added a navigation popup similar to the one in the image window
   * respect the selection and show how it will affect the filter
   * added API to draw to a GimpDrawablePreview from a GimpPixelRgn

- Added preview to more plug-ins: Cartoon, Apply Canvas, Photocopy,
  Motion Blur,

- Ported the Bumpmap plug-in preview to GimpDrawablePreview.

- Removed -u linker hacks from all Makefiles.


Contributors:

   Michael Natterer, Sven Neumann, David Odin, Manish Singh, Simon
   Budig, Nathan Summers, Alan Horkan, David Gowers, Bill Skaggs,
   Joao S. O. Bueno, Peter Kirchgessner



Overview of Changes in GIMP 2.1.4
=================================

- Rewritten internal handling of progress indicators. Embed progress
  bars to the File Open dialog to reduce annoying dialogs popping up.

- Added an API for plug-ins to embed a progress bar. Let the Script-Fu
  dialog swallow the progress bars created by running the script.

- Ported remaining plug-ins and modules to GimpPreviewArea and removed
  GimpOldPreview.

- Show progress while converting from RGB to Indexed Colors.

- Added new plug-ins Cartoon, Neon, Photocopy and Softglow.

- Let color selectors adapt to the given size.

- Import basic SVG shapes as paths.

- Improved GIH and guillotine plug-ins.

- Added GimpMessageBox widget. Collect error messages in a single
  dialog to reduce popups.

- Renamed the core GimpPreview widget to GimpView.

- Added a GimpPreview widget to libgimpwidgets. This is an abstract
  class that combines a GimpPreviewArea with scrollbars and a "Preview"
  toggle button.

- Added GimpDrawablePreview derived from GimpPreview.

- Improved previews in Unsharp Mask, Scatter RGB, Sharpen, Spread and
  Grid plug-ins.

- Added previews to Edge, Gaussian Blur, Neon, Soft Glow, Sobel and
  Selective Gaussian Blur.

- Added a logarithmic mode for the slider in a GimpScaleEntry.

- Script-Fu code cleanups.

- Fixed composite assembly code.

- Pass user settings for the checkerboard to plug-ins.

- Image comment, if any, is now shown within the info window.

- New function "Fit Canvas to Layers" (gimp_image_resize_to_layers)


Contributors:

   Michael Natterer, Sven Neumann, David Odin, Shlomi Fish, Bill Skaggs,
   Simon Budig, Ari Pollak, Spencer Kimball, Michael Schumacher, Joao
   S. O. Bueno, Manish Singh, Helvetix Victorinox, Kevin Cozens



Overview of Changes in GIMP 2.1.3
=================================

- Cleanups to the MMX code and the composite subsystem in general

- Cleanups and fixes to Gimpressionst plug-in (bug #148088)

- Redone light settings GUI for Lighting plug-in.

- Added keyboard shortcut editor to preferences dialog (bug #142922)

- Implemented the callbacks for the various "Clear saved foobar now"
  buttons in the preferences dialog.

- Added support for loading gradients from SVG files. This allows to
  share gradient definitions with Inkscape and Sodipodi (bug #148127)

- Added parsers for the various ways to define a color in SVG to
  libgimpcolor.

- Added GimpColorHexEntry widget to libgimpwidgets. It displays colors
  in hexadecimal represention and takes hex and SVG color names as input.

- Added GimpCellRendererColor and GimpCellRendererToggle to libgimpwidgets.

- Renamed GimpColor boxed type to GimpRGB and moved it to libgimpcolor.

- Moved GIMP_TYPE_UNIT and GIMP_TYPE_MEMSIZE to libgimpbase.

- Fixes to the BMP loader plug-in (bug #143682).

- Fixes to the Decompose plug-in (bug #147603).

- Added palette selector widgets to libgimpui.

- Allow to disable mnemonics in menus (bug #120034).

- Ported TWAIN plug-in to Mac OS X (bug #147962).

- Support motion event history as provided by some input device drivers.

- Let the undo system know more specifically what an undo step
  does. Use that info to keep tools active across modifications to
  the image that don't affect the tool (bug #109561).

- Changed default config for keyboard controller to allow scrolling
  the display using the cursor keys (#53988).

- Added GimpPreviewArea widget as replacement for the deprecated
  GtkPreview widget. Ported most plug-ins to the new widget.

- Added shapes for generated brushes and allow for softer brushes.

- Allow to specify the aspect ratio in the scale tool.

- Lots of bug fixes and other goodies. Check the ChangeLog for details.


Contributors:

   Michael Natterer, Sven Neumann, Helvetix Victorinox, Shlomi Fish, 
   Bill Skaggs, Brion Vibber, Raphael Quinet, Simon Budig, David Odin,
   Manish Singh, Hans Breuer, Michael Schumacher, Dave Neary



Overview of Changes in GIMP 2.1.2
=================================

- Further improvements to the new input controllers; added a keyboard
  controller.

- Show image preview in GFig plug-in, started a complete overhaul.

- Added Difference of Gaussians edge detection plug-in.

- Added more possibilities for drag'n'drop:
   * layers dialog accepts URI, color and pattern drops
   * path dialog takes and offers DND of SVG data

- Implemented PDB function gimp-path-get-point-at-dist.

- Allow to use the color picker to edit palettes (as in gimp-1.2).

- Improvements and code cleanup in gimpressionist plug-in.

- Allow to cut'n'paste image data between GIMP and other applications
  (for example Abiword) using the system clipboard.

- List unsaved images in Quit dialog.

- Completed core/gui separation. Optionally build a gimp-console
  application that behaves like 'gimp --no-interface' and doesn't link
  to GTK+ at all.

- Deprecated GimpPixmap and ported almost all users to GtkImage.

- Moved display projection code into a GimpProjection object. This means
  there's finally only a single projection per image.

- Introduced GimpPickable interface and implemented it for all core
  objects that you can pick colors from.

- Write smaller indexed MNG files.

- Fixed issues with the internal statusbar API.

- Allow for multiple light sources in the Lighting plug-in.

- Redone file type selection in file load/save dialogs.

- Removed HRZ plug-in.

- Improved developers documentation.

- Improved quality of antialiasing in the ellipse select tool.

- Lots of bug fixes and other goodies. Check the ChangeLog for details.


Contributors:

   Michael Natterer, Sven Neumann, Philip Lafleur, William Skaggs,
   Geert Jordaens, Simon Budig, Roman Joost, Michael Schumacher,
   Shlomi Fish, Hans Breuer, Brion Vibber, Robert Oegren, Kevin
   Cozens, Helvetix Victorinox



Overview of Changes in GIMP 2.1.1
=================================

- Added support for loading patterns in formats supported by GdkPixbuf
  (most notably PNG and JPEG).

- Use ARGB cursors when supported by the windowing system. Added nice
  new tool cursors.

- Added previews to Solid Noise and Unsharp Mask plug-ins.

- Improvements for painting with pressure-sensitive devices.

- Added preview for transform tools.

- Merged the Gaussian Blur plug-ins.

- Simplified the Blur plug-in.

- Reorganized the Preferences dialog.

- Dispatch Enter, Return, Backspace and Delete key events to the tools
  and use them where it makes sense.

- Some optimizations to the tile system, the gradient rendering and to 
  the cubic interpolation routine.

- Show the brush outline while painting.

- Added an interface that allows to add controller modules. Such a module
  can dispatch events to The GIMP which are mapped to actions by a
  user-configurable mapping table.  Added controller modules for mouse
  wheel, midi and linux_input devices.

- Applied HIG capitalization style to all(?) dialogs.

- Lots of bug fixes and other goodies. Check the ChangeLog for details.


Contributors:

   Michael Natterer, Sven Neumann, Manish Singh, Philip Lafleur,
   William Skaggs, Geert Jordaens, Yeti, Dave Neary, Jakub Steiner,
   David Gowers, Henrik Brix Andersen, Simon Budig, Pedro Gimeno,
   lots of translators and the contributors that I accidentally missed...



Overview of Changes in GIMP 2.1.0
=================================

GIMP 2.1.0 includes the following enhancements over GIMP 2.0:

 - 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...