[Gimp-developer] changes in script-fu in 2.3.14

[gg at catking.net]

On Fri, 16 Feb 2007 06:33:20 +0100, Kevin Cozens <kevin at ve3syb.ca> wrote:

> Sven Neumann wrote:
>> If I understood Kevin correctly the long-term goal for Tiny-Fu is to
>> start the interpreter on demand for each script that is executed. So at
>> some point scripts will behave more like plug-ins.
>
> That is one of the goals I have in mind for the Script-Fu plug-in.
>

First of all thanks for your efforts , you seem to have been working on  
all this for a long time now.

One thing that concerns me with Gimp development in general and of which  
these changes are a good example is lack of concern for backwards  
compatability.

A lot of people have contributed in one way or another to gimp over time  
but that does not mean they will always be here or be able to provide  
never ending support for things , like a plugin, they have contributed.  
There was a powerful suite of plugins written by a German maths doctor  
that got dropped a long time back. It seemed, having done the job once ,  
he did not have the time to redo it when gimp decided to change the  
interface.

There is also problems with the way changes broke the interface with  
gimp=print, amongst other things. Gimp 2.3 is still seriously unfinished  
as far as the print dlg goes yet it seems I still cannot use gutenprint  
with 2.2 . Net result I can't use my printer with gimp. As I understood  
that rather contentious exchanges between Sven and the gp lead dev this  
was because there were incompatible changes in the API. (If there's a way  
around this please correct me, and please do not take this as an attempt  
to reopen the heated arguements this issue invovled. The issue is that of  
continuity vs breakage).

There are quite obvious issues with running everything in the same name  
space. Surely the best way to address this issue would be to run a  
separate instance of the interpreter rather than put new conditions on the  
scripts that breaks a number of the ones in the registry and very likely  
at lot that are not. This would seem to be a work around for a flaw in the  
way gimp handles this.

Since this is one of your goals anyway , wouldn't it save a lot of effort  
all round and preserve a number of plugins that may not get ported across,  
if this could be brought forward?

You seem to have a lot of skill and familiarity with this area , is this  
an enormous undertaking ?

thx.