In this article, I present GIMP plug-ins basics and introduce the libgimp API. I will also show how to use the PDB to make our plug-in available to other script authors.
New developers are often intimidated by The GIMP size and its reputation. They think that writing a plug-in would be a difficult task. The goal of these articles is to dumb this feeling down, by showing how easily one can make a C plug-in.
In this part, I present a plug-in’s basic elements. We will see how to install a plug-in and how to get data from an image and directly manipulate it.
The GIMP script interface is centered on the Procedural database (PDB). At startup, The GIMP looks into a predefined set of places for scripts and plug-ins, and asks each new script to identify itself.
The plug-in declares itself to the PDB at that time, and passes informations like the position it wishes to get in the menu hierarchy, input parameters, and output parameters.
When a script or a plug-in wants to use our plug-in, it gets through the PDB, which manages communicating parameters in one direction and the other in a transparent way.
Internal functions that wish to get exposed to plug-ins have to be packaged first in the core, that will register them in the PDB, and secondly in the libgimp that will allow the function to be called as a normal one.
This was the introduction – now, we will look closer at our first plug-in, a “Hello, world!”.
Compiling the plug-in
To be able to compile simple plug-ins for The GIMP, one needs libgimp headers, as well as an associated utility named gimptool.
With that utility, one can install a plug-in either in a private directory (~/.gimp-2.0/plug-ins), or in the global plug-in directory.
Syntax is
gimptool-2.0 –install plugin.c or gimptool-2.0 –install-admin plugin.c
This utility, with other options, can also be used to install scripts, or uninstall plug-ins.
A GIMP plug-in can typically behave three different ways. It can take image data, modify it, and send back the modified image, like edge detection. It…
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You can read the article in its entirety, on the official website of https://developer.gimp.org/writing-a-plug-in/1/index.html
Thanks a lot … I hope your thoughts, your geniuses can have as much resonance as possible.
You can read the article in its entirety, on the official website of https://developer.gimp.org/writing-a-plug-in/1/index.html
Thanks a lot … I hope your thoughts, your geniuses can have as much resonance as possible.
