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<!--  section history:
  2009-02-23 j.h: copied content from gimp.org as astart for v2.6
  2009-02-23 j.h: move v2.4 content to appendix/history-24.xml
  2008-03-21 Mr.Dust: added 'ko'
  2007-11-08 KoSt: added 'no'
  2007-09-21 AntI: Added 'es'
  2007-09-02 lexa: copied content from gimp.org as a start for 2.4 for en de
  2007-09-02 lexa: moved 2.2 content to the appendix to make room for 2.4 news
-->
<sect1 id="gimp-introduction-history-2-6">
  <title>What's New in GIMP 2.6? </title>

  <para>
    GIMP 2.6 is an important release from a development point of view. It
    features changes to the user interface addressing some often received
    complaints, and a tentative integration of GEGL, the graph based image
    processing library that will eventually bring high bit-depth and
    non-destructive editing to GIMP.
  </para>

  <variablelist>
    <title>User Interface</title>

    <varlistentry>
      <term>Toolbox Menubar removed</term>
      <listitem>
        <para>
          The toolbox menubar has been removed and merged with the image
          window menubar. To be able to do this a window called the empty
          image window has been introduced. It hosts the menubar and keeps
          the application instance alive when no images are opened. It also
          acts as a drag and drop target. When opening the first image the
          empty image window is transformed into a normal image window, and
          when closing the last image, that window becomes the empty image
          window.
        </para>
        <figure>
          <title>New Look of the image window in GIMP 2.6</title>
          <mediaobject>
            <imageobject>
              <imagedata format="PNG"
                fileref="images/using/empty-image-window.png"/>
            </imageobject>
          </mediaobject>
        </figure>
      </listitem>
    </varlistentry>

    <varlistentry>
      <term>Toolbox and docks are utility windows</term>
      <listitem>
        <para>
          With the empty image window acting as a natural main window, the
          Toolbox and Docks windows are now utility windows rather than main
          windows. This enables window managers to do a much better
          job of managing the GIMP windows, including omitting the Toolbox
          and Docks from the taskbar and ensuring that the Toolbox and Docks
          always are above image windows.
        </para>
      </listitem>
    </varlistentry>

    <varlistentry>
      <term>Ability to scroll beyond image border</term>
      <listitem>
        <para>
          The Navigation dialog now allows panning beyond the image border;
          so it is no longer a problem to use a brush on the edge of
          an image that fills the entire display window. Also, if a utility
          window covers the image, you can pan the image to view or edit the
          portion covered by the utility window.
        </para>
        <figure>
          <title>Scrolling beyond border</title>
          <mediaobject>
            <imageobject>
              <imagedata format="PNG"
                    fileref="images/using/scroll-beyond-border.png"/>
            </imageobject>
          </mediaobject>
        </figure>
      </listitem>
    </varlistentry>

    <varlistentry>
      <term>Minor changes</term>
      <listitem>
      <itemizedlist>
        <listitem>
          <para>
            Renamed Dialogs menu to Windows.
          </para>
        </listitem>
        <listitem>
          <para>
            Keep a list of recently closed Docks and allow reopening them.
          </para>
        </listitem>
        <listitem>
          <para>
            Make opening images in already running GIMP instances work better
            on Windows.
          </para>
        </listitem>
        <listitem>
          <para>
            You can now enter the image zoom ratio directly in the status bar.
          </para>
        </listitem>
        <listitem>
          <para>
            Added support for using online help instead of a locally
            installed GIMP Help package.
          </para>
        </listitem>
        <listitem>
          <para>
            Make it possible to lock tabs in docks to prevent accidental
            moving.
          </para>
        </listitem>
      </itemizedlist>
    </listitem>
    </varlistentry>
  </variablelist>

  <variablelist>
    <title>Tools, Filters and Plug-ins</title>
    <varlistentry>
      <term>Improved Free Select Tool</term>
      <listitem>
        <para>
          The freehand select tool has been enhanced to support polygonal
          selections. It also allows mixing free hand segments with polygonal
          segments, editing of existing segments, applying angle-constraints
          to segments, and of course the normal selection tool operations
          like add and subtract. Altogether this ends up making the Free
          Select Tool a very versatile, powerful and easy-to-use selection
          tool.
        </para>
        <figure>
          <title>Polygonal Selection</title>
          <mediaobject>
            <imageobject>
              <imagedata format="PNG"
                fileref="images/using/new-free-select-tool.png"/>
            </imageobject>
          </mediaobject>
        </figure>
      </listitem>
    </varlistentry>

    <varlistentry>
      <term>Brush Dynamics</term>
      <listitem>
        <para>
          Brush dynamics uses an input dynamic such as pressure, velocity, or
          random, to modify brush parameters such as opacity, hardness, size,
          or color; every brush supports size and opacity, most support more.
          Velocity and random are usable with a mouse. The Ink tool, that
          supported velocity, has been overhauled to better handle
          velocity-dependent painting.
        </para>
        <figure>
          <title>Brush Dynamics</title>
          <mediaobject>
            <imageobject>
              <imagedata format="JPG"
                fileref="images/using/brush-dynamics.jpg"/>
            </imageobject>
          </mediaobject>
        </figure>
        <para>
          Brush dynamics have enabled a new feature in stroking paths. There
          is now a check box under the <quote>paint tool</quote> option, for
          emulating brush dynamics if you stroke using a paint tool. What this
          means is that when your stroke is painted, GIMP tells
          the brush that the pressure and velocity are varying along the
          length of the stroke. Pressure starts with no pressure, ramps up to
          full pressure, and then ramps down again to no pressure.
          Velocity starts from zero and ramps up to full speed by the end of
          the stroke.
        </para>
      </listitem>
    </varlistentry>

    <varlistentry>
      <term>Minor changes</term>
      <listitem>
        <itemizedlist>
          <listitem>
            <para>
              Added a bounding box for the Text Tool that supports automatic
              wrapping of text within that bounding box.
            </para>
            <figure>
              <title>Text tool bounding box</title>
              <mediaobject>
                <imageobject>
                  <imagedata format="PNG"
                    fileref="images/using/text-tool.png"/>
                </imageobject>
              </mediaobject>
            </figure>
          </listitem>
          <listitem>
            <para>
              Move handles for rectangle based tools like Crop and Rectangle
              Select to the outside of the rectangle when the rectangle is
              narrow.
            </para>
            <figure>
              <title>Rectangle handles</title>
              <mediaobject>
                <imageobject>
                  <imagedata format="PNG"
                    fileref="images/using/rectangle-handles.png"/>
                </imageobject>
              </mediaobject>
            </figure>
          </listitem>
          <listitem>
            <para>
              Added motion constraints to the Move Tool.
            </para>
          </listitem>
          <listitem>
            <para>
              Improved event smoothing for paint tools.
            </para>
          </listitem>
          <listitem>
            <para>
              Mark the center of rectangles while they are moved, and snap
              the center to grid and rulers.
            </para>
          </listitem>
          <listitem>
            <para>
              Enable brush scaling for the Smudge tool.
            </para>
          </listitem>
          <listitem>
            <para>
              Added ability to save presets in all color tools for color
              adjustments you use frequently.
            </para>
          </listitem>
          <listitem>
            <para>
              Allow to transfer settings from <emphasis>Brightness-Contrast
              </emphasis> to <emphasis>Levels</emphasis>, and from
              <emphasis>Levels</emphasis> to <emphasis>Curves</emphasis>.
            </para>
          </listitem>
          <listitem>
            <para>
              Allow changing opacity on transform tool previews.
            </para>
          </listitem>
          <listitem>
            <para>
              The Screenshot plug-in has been given the ability to capture
              the mouse cursor (using Xfixes).
            </para>
          </listitem>
          <listitem>
            <para>
              Display aspect ratio of the Crop and Rectangle Select Tool
              rectangles in the status bar.
            </para>
          </listitem>
          <listitem>
            <para>
              Desaturate has been given an on-canvas preview.
            </para>
          </listitem>
          <listitem>
            <para>
              The Flame plug-in has been extended with 22 new variations.
            </para>
          </listitem>
          <listitem>
            <para>
              Data file folders like brush folders are searched recursively
              for files.
            </para>
          </listitem>
          <listitem>
            <para>
              Replaced the PSD import plug-in with a rewritten version that
              does what the old version did plus some other things, for
              example reading of ICC color profiles.
            </para>
          </listitem>
          <listitem>
            <para>Several displays use Cairo library.</para>
            <figure id="gimp-cairo-2-4-vs-2-6">
              <title>Comparing 2.6 display vs 2.4</title>
              <mediaobject>
                <imageobject>
                  <imagedata format="PNG"
                    fileref="images/using/gimp-curves-tool-2-4-vs-2-6.png"/>
                </imageobject>
              </mediaobject>
            </figure>
          </listitem>
        </itemizedlist>
      </listitem>
    </varlistentry>
  </variablelist>

  <variablelist>
    <title>Under the Hood</title>
    <varlistentry>
      <term>GEGL</term>
      <listitem>
        <para>
          Important progress towards high bit-depth and non-destructive
          editing in GIMP has been made. Most color operations in GIMP are
          now ported to the powerful graph based image processing framework
          GEGL <xref linkend="bibliography-online-gegl"/>, meaning that the
          internal processing is done in 32bit floating point linear
          light RGBA. By default the legacy 8bit code paths are still used,
          but a curious user can turn on the use of GEGL for the color
          operations with <link linkend="gimp-config-use-gegl">Colors / Use
          GEGL</link>.
        </para>
        <para>
          In addition to porting color operations to GEGL, an experimental
          GEGL Operation tool has been added, found in the Tools menu. It
          enables applying GEGL operations to an image and it gives on-canvas
          previews of the results. The screenshot below shows this
          for a Gaussian Blur.
        </para>
        <figure>
          <title>GEGL operation</title>
          <mediaobject>
            <imageobject>
              <imagedata format="PNG"
                fileref="images/using/experimental-gegl-tool.png"/>
            </imageobject>
          </mediaobject>
            </figure>
      </listitem>
    </varlistentry>

    <varlistentry>
      <term>Minor changes</term>
      <listitem>
        <para>
          Ported many widgets to use the 2D graphics library cairo
          <xref linkend="bibliography-online-cairo"/> for drawing. See this
          <link linkend="gimp-cairo-2-4-vs-2-6">comparison</link> for an
          example of how much better this looks.
        </para>
      </listitem>
    </varlistentry>
  </variablelist>

  <variablelist>
    <title>Miscellaneous</title>
    <varlistentry>
      <term>Plug-in Development</term>
      <listitem>
        <para>
          There are new things for a plug-in developer to enjoy as well.
          For example, procedures can now give a detailed error
          description in case of an error, and the error can be propagated
          to the user.
        </para>
        <para>
          GIMP 2.6 also further enhances its scripting abilities. In
          particular there is now a much richer API for the creation and
          manipulation of text layers. Here is a list of new symbols in GIMP
          2.6: <xref linkend="bibliography-online-gimp-dev-new"/>.
        </para>
      </listitem>
    </varlistentry>

    <varlistentry>
      <term>Backwards Compatibility</term>
      <listitem>
        <para>
          Some old scripts could not be used with GIMP-2.4. This has been
          improved and 2.6 should run 2.0 and 2.2 scripts.
        </para>
      </listitem>
    </varlistentry>

    <varlistentry>
      <term>Known Problems</term>
      <listitem>
      <itemizedlist>
        <listitem>
          <para>
            The Utility window hint is currently only known to work well in
            the Linux GNOME desktop environment and on Windows starting with
            GIMP 2.6.1.
          </para>
        </listitem>
        <listitem>
          <para>
            Using the Text Tool is currently not an optimal experience.
            Making it work better is a goal for GIMP 2.8.
          </para>
        </listitem>
        <listitem>
          <para>
            If you build GIMP yourself and don't have GVfs support on your
            platform you need to explicitly pass
            <option>--without-gvfs</option> to <command>configure</command>,
            otherwise opening remote files will not work properly.
          </para>
        </listitem>
      </itemizedlist>
    </listitem>
    </varlistentry>
  </variablelist>
</sect1>
