[Gimp-developer] Brushes/input controllers changes idea

[David Hodson]

Joern P. Meier wrote:

> Maybe adding a new brush type wouldn't be difficult, but actually
> implementing a component based "brush synthesizer" (to use David
> Hodson's ARP 2500 analogy ;)) might be.
> [...]
> The real power of such a system would come from combining the predefined
> components in ways the developers had never thought of, which means not
> just twisting knobs on predefined brushes, but also pushing the
> components around on a filter stack and being able to configure which
> parameters are affected by the filter (much like in David's proposal).
> 
> But I do understand that this would be quite a huge task (especially
> with a GUI to match).

That's right, and that's pretty much where I got stalled and ran out of 
free time to work on it. The first step would be to demonstrate the 
power of the approach by duplicating (then replacing) all the existing 
brush types, using fixed filter stacks and fixed control attachments. 
Then add code to read and write the stack configuration, and it would be 
easy to add a whole set of fancy brush types just by thinking up new 
arrangements of filter stacks - you would want these anyway (in 
libraries, like patterns or gradients), for artists who didn't want to 
go behind the scenes. You could write a lot of useful code before 
needing to tackle the editing GUI.

-- 
David Hodson  --  this night wounds time