[gimp-web] GIMP 2.99.4 news update.

[Jehan <jehanp src gnome org>]

commit 5c680a472a19274b6063000f6ac79aa0dfc407ff
Author: Jehan <jehan girinstud io>
Date:   Fri Dec 25 20:00:55 2020 +0100

    GIMP 2.99.4 news update.
    
    The part on the Paint Select tool benefited from some feedback by Thomas
    Manni. Hopefully I got it right!
    Some more global improvement. The Babl/GEGL part in particular will need
    to be filled in.

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index 471f7349..4e3082c2 100644
--- a/content/news/2020/2020-12_GIMP-2.99.4_Released/index.md
+++ b/content/news/2020/2020-12_GIMP-2.99.4_Released/index.md
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 Title: Development release GIMP 2.99.4 is out
-Date: 2020-12-20
+Date: 2020-12-25
 Category: News
 Authors: Wilber
 Slug: gimp-2-99-4-released
@@ -56,6 +56,14 @@ discovery:
   hence advertizing the ability for smaller relative resizing (an action
   also available with the third button, usually `right-click`).
 
+
+<figure>
+<img src="{attach}gimp-2.99.4-slider-cursors.png" alt="GIMP 2.99.4: usability improvements on the slider 
widget"/>
+<figcaption>
+<em>GIMP 2.99.4: new cursors on the slider to grab, do small updates or text-only edit</em>
+</figcaption>
+</figure>
+
 ## Multi-layer selection
 
 Multi-item selection in the `Layers` dockable comes with a few generic
@@ -238,28 +246,18 @@ writing systems, yet not for Korean and Japanese until now.
 
 # New experimental Paint Select tool
 
-Our long-term contributor Thomas Manni is working on a new smart
-selection tool. This new development comes from recognition of the
-limitations of the current "Foreground Select" tool, which unfortunately
-does not work so well for actually segmenting global shapes, often takes
-a lot of time on big images and have memory and stability issues.
-
-Quote from Thomas:
-
-> Foreground select uses a matting algorithm : its goal is to provide an
-> alpha (grey) value for all "unknown" pixels ; generally it should be
-> used only on regions where pixels colors is a mix of foreground and
-> background colors (like hairs or furs)
+Our long-term contributor Thomas Manni is working on a new paint-based
+selection tool. It will offer a new way to progressively make a
+selection by roughly painting the region of interest using a brush.
 
-The new tool instead will be a targeted segmentation" tool: its goal is
+This new tool is based on a targeted segmentation algorithm: its goal is
 to quickly isolate a specific region in the image ; it provides a binary
 result (fully selected for the area of interest, fully unselected for
-all other pixels). Right now, if you test it in 2.99.4, you will still
-find it quite slow, but this is because it is very early development and
-no work has been done on optimization so far, only functionality. Yet we
-expect it to be quite efficient and fast in the end, unlike the
-"Foreground Select" tool which suffers from an algorithm inadapted to
-its expected purpose.
+all other pixels).
+
+Right now, if you test it in 2.99.4, you will still find it imprecise
+and quite slow, but this is because it is very early development.
+Yet we expect it to be quite efficient and fast in the end.
 
 <figure>
 <img src="{attach}gimp-2.99.4-Paintselect-canvas-interactions.png" alt="GIMP 2.99.4: Paint Select tool"/>
@@ -268,42 +266,136 @@ its expected purpose.
 </figcaption>
 </figure>
 
-Of course, this is still an early experiment, therefore it is advised
-not to keep all the hopes too high, just in case. If everything goes as
-planned, it is not sure yet what would happen to the "Foreground Select"
-tool, but it is likely we try to re-target it to focus on details, hair,
-fur and the like with an appropriate updated interaction method adapted
-to tweaking selection details, instead of grabbing a whole shape at once.
+## What about the Foreground Select tool?
+
+Some people might be wondering about the Foreground Select tool, which
+looks from a quick look as very similar.
+This quote from Thomas might explain the difference:
+
+> Foreground select uses a matting algorithm : its goal is to provide an
+> alpha (grey) value for all "unknown" pixels ; generally it should be
+> used only on regions where pixels colors is a mix of foreground and
+> background colors (like hairs or furs)
+
+Moreover it is true that part of this new development comes from
+recognition of some limitations of the current "Foreground Select" tool,
+which unfortunately does not work so well for actually segmenting global
+shapes, often takes a lot of time on big images and have memory and
+stability issues.
+
+It is not to say that the goal of this new tool is to replace the
+foreground select tool, but to offer a new way to do selections. We
+might be able to improve the Foreground Select tool to work better on
+more situations. Discussions have also been happening on reworking the
+interaction interface as a better way to retarget the tool usage.
+
+Moreover more experiments are still in progress or planned by Thomas, in
+particular to give new ways to refine edges of existing selection (since
+the Paint Select tool is doing binary selections which are less
+appropriate for selection edges).
+This is all to be considered as open development and experiments in Free
+Software. We shall see how things evolve!
 
 # API updates
 ## Dialog generation for plug-ins
 
-FIXME
+We have been working on dialog generation for plug-ins. A plug-in
+historically comes with a "procedure" (which can be called from the core
+but also from other plug-ins through the `PDB` protocol), with
+parameters and 3 run methods: interactively, non-interactively and with
+last values. The non-interactive and with last values run methods
+imply known parameters (given by the caller), but an "interactive" run
+implies to ask for these parameters, usually with added logics.
 
-## New generic metadata support API for saving
+Until now, this always needed specific GUI code. We now added some new
+functions for easy dialog generation from the procedure parameters. In
+simplest case, you could therefore generate a full blown plug-in dialog
+in less than 5 lines.
 
-FIXME
+Several checks were added, such as mnemonic verification, ensuring that
+every displayed property in a plug-in dialog has a unique mnemonic. This
+is a very useful feature for usability and accessibility, for people who
+mostly use keyboard navigation.
+
+## New generic metadata support API for exporting
+
+With the plug-in dialog generation, we also special-cased some feature
+for export plug-ins. In particular, we tried to rework some of the
+metadata logics and common points accross various file formats.
+
+This goes together with a more thorough work currently done by Jacob
+Boerema on metadata handling (some of this work will end up in the GIMP
+2.10.x series, but other parts, the fundamental one, might be only for
+GIMP 3).
 
 ## Updated file plug-ins
 
-FIXME
+Only 3 plug-ins so far have benefited from the new generic dialog
+generation API: the PNG, JPEG and TIFF plug-ins. In the most extreme
+case, we shaved 600 lines of code off the JPEG plug-in code!
+
+**Note**: we just realized (after release) there may actually be crashes
+now on these 3 plug-ins 😱, which escaped us because they only happen on
+Windows! Pretty bad, but then you discover the joy of running unstable
+versions.
+
+<figure>
+<img src="{attach}gimp-2.99.4-png-export.png" alt="GIMP 2.99.4: dialog generation on PNG plug-in"/>
+<figcaption>
+<em>PNG export dialog fully generated in a few lines of code: you don't see much difference? That's the 
point!</em>
+</figcaption>
+</figure>
 
 ## Dev docs on porting plug-ins to 3.0
 
-FIXME
+Some embryo of [plug-in porting 
documentation](https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/blob/master/devel-docs/GIMP3-plug-in-porting-guide/)
+had been started a month ago. We welcome anyone who follows the API
+changes to look at already ported official plug-ins in our source
+repository and help with the documentation side too. This is still
+moving API, yet most of the core logics will stay the same, so the
+ground work can be started already!
 
 # GEGL and babl
 
 FIXME
 
+# Download and bug reporting
+
+We remind this is a development version and therefore issues are bound
+to happen. It is not advised to use these builds for production.
+Nevertheless we are welcoming reports on issues. We fixed 21 reported
+bugs (and many more unreported ones) since [GIMP 2.99.2
+release](https://www.gimp.org/news/2020/11/06/gimp-2-99-2-released/) and
+we expect many are still unfixed. Worse we may have created new ones as
+this is very moving code!
+
+* [Development download page](https://www.gimp.org/downloads/devel/)
+* [Bug tracker to report any issue](https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/)
+
+Note: we still haven't got a build for GIMP 2.99.4 on macOS, yet you may
+have noticed our other news the very same day about finally a [release
+for the GIMP 2.10.22 stable release on
+macOS](https://testing.gimp.org/2020/12/25//gimp-2-10-22-released-macos/)
+(double Christmas!). Therefore things are progressing on this side, and
+an unstable build might happen soon too!
+
 # What's next
 
-FIXME
+A lot more work is still in-progress, so as always, we welcome with very
+opened arms and warm heart any contribution to code, bug investigation,
+themes, icons, documentation, translation, website, builds…
 
-We are aware that GTK 4.0 is out, we have no plans switching over
-to it before GIMP 3.0 is released.
+We remind our code repository and bug tracker are at: 
[https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/](https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/)
+
+Also we are aware that GTK 4.0 is out, we have no plans switching over
+to it before GIMP 3.0 is released. No need to ask for this!
 
 You can [donate to the project and personally fund several GIMP
 developers](https://www.gimp.org/donating/) who make this all possible
 at all. This is also a way to give back and accelerate the development
 of GIMP if you appreciate the project.
+
+Have a very nice Christmas 🥳🎄 and end of 2020 everyone. This year was
+a bit particular, but maybe some things were good in it for you, and
+hopefully GIMP was one of these things. We sure wish 2021 to go for the
+better for everyone!