[Gimp-developer] API proposal for libgimp export dialog

[Sven Neumann]

Hi,

On Tue, 2009-07-14 at 12:44 +0200, Martin Nordholts wrote:

> Continuing the work on 
> http://gui.gimp.org/index.php/Save_%2B_export_specification , here is my 
> API proposal for common export dialog logic to be shared by file format 
> plug-ins:
> 
>    GtkWidget * gimp_export_dialog_new (const gchar *format_name,
>                                        const gchar *role,
>                                        const gchar *help_id);
> 
> This function creates a new dialog, and plug-ins then use
> 
>    GtkWidget * gimp_export_dialog_get_container (GtkWidget *dialog);
> 
> to get a vbox that the file-format specific widgets with export options 
> are put it.

I'd suggest to have gimp_export_dialog_add() instead with semantics
similar to gtk_container_add().

> One open question is how to deal with exporting specific layers to 
> files. With the removal of dialogs in gimp_export_image() one does not 
> have the possibility to ignore flattening/merging the image any longer, 
> so it's not possible to export a single layer to a PNG without creating 
> a separate image for that layer. But on the other hand, it doesn't seem 
> unreasonable to require a user to do that if he/she wants to export a 
> single layer. With some effort I guess we can add common logic to the 
> export dialog to deal with single-layer exports somehow.

I think it's not unreasonable to require creation of a new image for
exporting a single layer of a multi-layered image. But it becomes
unreasonable if you want to export all layers to separate images. We
should probably provide a script in the default distribution that
provides such functionality: File->Export Layers.


Sven