[Gimp-developer] An idea for resource management

[David Gowers]

On Mon, May 19, 2008 at 5:41 PM, Aurimas Juška <aurimas.juska at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Mon, May 19, 2008 at 2:05 AM, Robert Krawitz <rlk at alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>>   Currently, in order to use a custom brush/gradient/etc, you must first
>>   create it, then edit/save/etc.  Every time you want a new brush you have
>>   to create a new one, even if it is a temporary brush.  Instead why not
>>   have the 'active' brush (and gradient,etc) always be user editable,
>>   saved between sessions.
>>
>> How would you restore the original version of the brush, in case you
>> edited it accidentally?
>
> How I understand the idea, the 'active brush' is a copy of the brush
> that you've selected. So you can play with it in any way you like
> without breaking the original brush (which could be a read-only file,
> btw).
>
> Workflow could be something like the following:
> 1. Select a brush. A copy of it is created transparently to the user.
> 2. User can easily edit the brush for her needs.
> 3. Paint something
> 4. (optionally) Save the brush to disk.
> 5. Select another brush. A copy of it is created transparently to the
> user. Previous 'current brush' is lost.

I like this workflow. It makes me think of an idea, where you can have
8 custom brushes attached to your image (and saved with it); when you
load the image, they appear in your brushes dialog as 'myimage.xcf
work brush #N', and are stored in a temporary location on disk.). When
a non-custom brush is selected, it is copied to the oldest custom
brush (which then becomes the newest, and is made active). Selecting
between custom brushes affects which one is currently edited (and of
course, being drawn with :)
When the image is saved, the brushes are stored as well (from their
temporary locations).