Hi all,
It's been a while since we've had anything like the status
updates we had before Christmas, so here goes...
We're in pre-release mode, as many of you might have noticed.
gimp-2.0pre3 should be coming out this week, and will contain
another 40 or so known bug fixes and lots of code clean-up we
didn't know about to help 2.0 be even more stable than it would
have been if we hadn't fixed the bugs.
Of note are a number of fixes and features which have been added
to the tiff plug-in in recent weeks, thanks to Andrej Kiselev,
the libtiff maintainer. We've also had a modification in the
behaviour of the zoom tool, as a result of a lively discussion
between Simon Budig (of path tool fame) and Guillermo Romero.
Mitch has, as usual, been doing great work. Among the changes
he's made are to merge all shortcuts on image windows and docks
together, so that the same shortcuts work regardless of whether
the active window is the image window or another dock. He's also
fixed a massive 17 of the 35 bug fixes since pre2 came out.
Aside from that, there's lots of stuff happenning outside CVS
too... the help team recently did a pre-release of the
gimp-help-2 module, and it's looking very good. Roman, Daniel,
Raymond, Niklas, Sven and everyone else who is working on the
help right now are doing a great job.
Sven and Wolfgang Hofer have also recently released a 2.0
snapshot of the GAP plug-in, which is lookign very nice indeed.
At the moment, it has more or less all the functionality of the
CinePaint frame editor, and then some. Recent additions like the
bluebox plug-in and onionskin plug-in, as well as updates to the
MovePath plug-in, have made this an excellent animation package.
Dan Rogers is putting a lot of time into getting the GIMP
Foundation up and running. This has been a tough job, which he
has done more or less alone. We now need to start thinking about
things like the eventual organisation fo the foundation, but
having a foundation is a great step towards getting some funding
for things like GUADEC.
Dan and Calvin have also been talking quite a bit about how they
see gegl moving forward to an eventual integration with the GIMP.
There was a very lively thread on gegl-developers recently, which
would be very interesting reading for all GIMP developers
wondering about gegl. Unfortunately, the archives haven't yet
caught up with the list, so those of you not subscribed to the
list will have to wait a while. The commits have also accelerated
recently in gegl - the bones of the image data structures is now
present in CVS (much of it with dummy implementations, but the
APIs are now available).
Also, organisation plans for the GIMP conference are moving along
nicely. It was decided to share the conference with GUADEC, which
reduces the amount of organisation time to put in. Dan and I have
started organising fundraising, and will soon be looking for more
volunteers to get decent contacts for funding. The graphics
thread of guadec is looking promising, and for those of you who
are thinking of writing a paper, or making a presentation, the
closing date for submissions is in 2 weeks time.
So there we go... hoopefully a month from now, more or less, we
will be celebrating the final release of the GIMP 2.0, and
preparing for GUADEC/GIMPCon in June - start booking your flights
soon, and see ye there!
Cheers,
Dave.
--
David Neary,
Lyon, France
E-Mail: bolsh@xxxxxxxx
