Hi, I am the maintainer of the GIFT, the GNU Image Finding Tool. The GIFT was programmed as part of the Viper project. When Viper was accepted as GNU package (under the condition that we commit to furnishing some more docs), we renamed it GIFT. The GIFT enables you to search for images by their content. This means you do not have to annotate (i.e. put keywords on) the images to do similarity searches on them. GIFT is a server framework that communicates with the outside world using an XML-based communication protocol, MRML. This protocol is simple and extensible. Currently, the only MRML compliant client for the GIFT is SnakeCharmer, mainly written by Zoran Pecenovic from EPFLausanne. This client is written in JAVA, and Zoran and I are currently working on fixing the last glitches we experience with Kaffe. It runs decently on JAVA. This is nice, as we can use this pair for web demos like: http://viper.unige.ch/demo.html (this demo might be down, as we are currently changing our server hardware). This we already find quite cool :-) What we would like to have: -------------------------- Cooler, however, we would find a tight integration into the GIMP. Just imagine doing query by example (QBE) from the GIMP: take the current image/layer from the GIMP, and do some QBE by operating some popup menu. This would allow for query-by-sketch etc. . Imagine more: such an MRML client would enable you to query GIFTs everywhere. Imagine this http://gimp-savvy.com/PHOTO-ARCHIVE/index.html with content-based indexing. Imagine querying this with the GIMP, without leaving the GIMP, and directly downloading images you have found as layers into the GIMP. What would be to do: ------------------- We have already some Perl routines that support XML (=> MRML). What would be needed would be to get inspired by SnakeCharmer and create a neat GIMP plugin. The other part that still needs quite an amount of improvement is the treatment of images that are new to the collection. Indexing is too slow to be done on the fly, but I guess we would find a solution for that if there is a GIMP plugin. Do you have any thoughts about that? Is there any volunteer, or volunteer group? I would be happy to help in taking the decision. Cheers, Wolfgang -- Wolfgang Müller, assistant-doctorant Group Home Page: http://vision.unige.ch/ Viper's new name is: The GIFT. The GIFT is the GNU Image Finding Tool! Get it at: ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gift/
