[Gimp-developer] Activating actions through the PDB

[David Gowers]

Hi Sven,

On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 4:57 PM, Sven Neumann <sven at gimp.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
>
>  On Wed, 2008-04-02 at 14:21 +1030, David Gowers wrote:
>
>  > This second class is really all I can see traditional plugins needing
>  > to do after GEGLification is complete and stable. Ie. the first class
>  > of plugins wouldn't need to use the PDB at all, probably.
>  > Do you agree with this idea?
>
>  Absolutely not. The GEGL API is not sufficient for this class of
>  plug-ins as plug-ins will still need access to GIMP objects such as
>  layers and masks and whatever else. There are associated GEGL nodes for
>  these objects, but that is by no means sufficient.

Oh.. of course. Sorry, I was thinking about things like gradient-map,
normalize, and tile. More complex things like warp, gimpressionist, or
sample colorize didn't occur to me..

>
>
>  > In that case, it makes sense that a plug-in would mainly provide
>  > actions. It is also useful to be able to trigger other actions, since
>  > many things aren't accessible through the PDB yet, only as actions.
>  > (for example, I would like to make a plugin that creates an additional
>  > display, zooms it to 200% and then shrink wraps it, so I have a
>  > 'working area' and a 'real size' view.)
>
>  This is intentional. The PDB doesn't provide access to the GIMP user
>  interface. Scripts and plug-ins are supposed to in non-interactive mode
>  as well. What you are asking for is completely outside the realm of the
>  PDB and it is not going to be added there, ever. If we really want to
>  expose such user interface functionality to scripts, then we will need a
>  different scripting API for it.
>
>
>  Sven

Okay. The kind of plug-ins I'm talking about are also too lightweight
for the current framework -- it's best if they run quickly -- and my
current workaround can run them quickly (20 times / second for the
average one). Truthfully UI manipulation doesn't fit in that area,
almost everything is either about a quick manipulation on the image
(vector-smooth a binary selection, colorize a greyscale, 'apply' a
layer) or a quick change to the context (interpolate colors, colorize
a brush, sieve a brush). I really think there is a place for this type
of simple 'macro' host. Hopefully I can get it into releasable state
soon. I'll just have to hack around the rest.)

Thanks for your time.