[gimp-web] content: first draft for GIMP 2.99.8 news.

[Jehan <jehanp src gnome org>]

commit 988533738bb3cc91a17e823224c55d0af598dbd2
Author: Jehan <jehan girinstud io>
Date:   Fri Oct 15 16:42:23 2021 +0200

    content: first draft for GIMP 2.99.8 news.
    
    Still a bunch of TODO and it needs much re-reading, re-wording,
    proofing, images…

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+Title: Development version: GIMP 2.99.8 Released
+Date: 2021-10-18
+Category: News
+Authors: Wilber
+Slug: gimp-2-99-8-released
+Summary: "Many fancy updates for GIMP 2.99.8"
+Image: TODO
+Status: draft
+
+GIMP 2.99.8 is our new development version, once again coming with a
+huge set of improvements.
+
+<figure>
+<img src="{attach}gimp-2.99.8-TODO-Wilber-and-co.jpg" alt="Work in Progress - Wilber and co. comics strip by 
Aryeom"/>
+<figcaption>
+<em>"Work in Progress (Feel free to grab a tool and help)" by <a 
href="https://film.zemarmot.net";>Aryeom</a>, Creative Commons by-sa 4.0 - GIMP 2.99.6</em>
+</figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+[TOC]
+
+To get a more complete list of changes, you should refer to the
+[NEWS](https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/blob/master/NEWS)
+file or look at the [commit
+history](https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/commits/master).
+
+# Core changes
+## Clone-type tools updated
+
+The `Clone`, `Heal` and `Perspective Clone` tools now work when multiple
+layers are selected. There are 2 new modes in particular:
+
+* When sourcing from multiple selected drawables then cloning into a
+  single drawable, the source is the composited image. This is similar
+  to "Sample Merged", except that it is limited to a list of drawables
+  and you don't have to hide layers which you don't want to source from.
+
+* When cloning while multiple drawables are being selected, each
+  drawable clones from itself to itself, i.e. every drawable is both its
+  source and target. This can be very useful in particular when you need
+  to heal several layers exactly the same way, for instance when working
+  on textures and various texture mappings.
+
+## Wayland (and a bit of macOS)
+
+Windows drawing logics evolved in recent compositing window managers. In
+particular, the drawing of image selection (marching ants 🐜
+representing your selection boundary) broke on Wayland (and macOS since
+BigSur release). The selection tools were still perfectly working but
+the outlines were simply not visible on the canvas anymore.
+
+We fixed this by reimplementing part of how selection were being drawn
+over the image. It was targetted for Wayland, but our recent macOS
+contributor (see below in [macOS package](#macos) section) confirmed it
+also fixes the issue for BigSur and above. Now the next step is to
+backport this fix to the stable branch (only for macOS since the GTK2
+stable version works with XWayland, hence doesn't exhibit the bug).
+
+An additional change, specifically to our Flatpak is that we will use
+the new "fallback-x11" permission instead of "x11" to prevent
+unnecessary X11 access while in Wayland, hence improving security step
+by step.
+
+Finally some people reported huge memory leaks of GIMP under Wayland
+only (it was fine on X11). We didn't do much so we can't take any credit
+for this, but this seems to have been fixed, probably by a fix in a
+dependency with Wayland-specific code.
+
+## Windows Ink support (Windows only)
+
+Preferences now allows to select the input device API on Windows (Wintab
+or Windows Ink), as Windows Pointer Input Stack (Windows Ink) support
+was added recently in GTK3. This is a huge milestone since more graphics
+tablet or touch devices come with Ink support as a default whereas the
+legacy Wintab interface requires specific drivers.
+
+This is even more the case with Windows 8 and over, for which most
+tablets should work out-of-the-box with Windows Ink.
+
+Note that it might be backported to the GIMP 2.10 series. To be
+continued…
+
+## Canvas-focus by toolbox clicking
+
+Clicking anywhere on the toolbox or on Wilber's drop area now actively
+focuses the canvas (similarly to the `Esc` shortcut). This will allow to
+more efficiently work on canvas with shortcuts.
+
+For instance, you could pan directly with the `Space bar` without having
+to click on canvas (hence activate a tool) when your keyboard focus was
+previously on some text widget, by clicking anywhere on toolbox (buttons
+and dead area alike) first.
+
+## Dropping thumbnail icon
+
+After years of discussions and reports by people, we dropped the
+Thumbnail icon feature: when images were opened, the application icon
+used to be a composition of the active image and the application icon
+(Wilber). For many people, this changing icon was confusing and hard to
+distinguish when searching for GIMP among other software's windows.
+
+Moreover this feature was actually working on less and less platforms
+because of recent OS and desktop rules. So depending on your
+configuration, you were already only seeing the Wilber icon, or worse
+this icon feature could be actively working against your desktop. This
+is why we decided it was better to just drop the feature rather than
+making it an option, because we cannot fight forever against changes of
+paradigms from the various desktop and operating systems.
+
+## Leak-chasing
+
+Some contributors, such as Andrzej Hunt and Massimo Valentini, seem to
+have decided to chase small memory leaks with code analyzers, which is a
+very nice way to spend your downtime. We recommend! 👍
+
+# File formats
+## JPEG XL
+
+JPEG XL is now optionally supported through the awesome work of Daniel
+Novomeskỳ, who also did a lot for our HEIC/AVIF support.
+
+GIMP can now load and export JPEX XL files (`.jxl`) in grayscale and
+RGB, with color profile support. Our export also provides a "*lossless*"
+option and several "*speed*" encoding values.
+
+By the way, for anyone interested into this format and want it on the
+stable GIMP 2.10 series, a [third-party plug-in is
+available](https://github.com/libjxl/libjxl/tree/main/plugins/gimp),
+developed by the developers of `libjxl` themselves (the library we use
+for our own plug-in).
+
+## PSD and PSB
+
+GIMP now supports bigger-than-4GiB PSD files and loading up to 99
+channels (specs say that 56 is the max but some sample PSD files have
+more channels).
+
+Furthermore the PSB file format is now supported for loading.
+
+## Other formats and plug-ins
+
+* 16-bit SGI images are now supported (until now, they were loaded as
+  8-bit).
+* The WebP plug-in was ported to the `GimpSaveProcedureDialog` <abbr
+  title="Application Programming Interface">API</abbr>.
+* Scriptfu now handles `GFile` and `GimpObjectArray` types.
+
+# Plug-in development
+
+Our <abbr title="Application Programming Interface">API</abbr> for
+plug-in developers got the following improvements:
+
+- New `gimp_display_present()` function to present a specific display at
+  the top of the image display stack.
+- New `gimp_procedure_dialog_fill_expander()` to create a `GtkExpander`
+  in procedure dialogs.
+- All widgets within a same container in a `GimpProcedureDialog` are added
+  to their own `GtkSizeGroup` for better aligned generated dialog, yet
+  only within their own level of widgets.
+
+# Development and Continuous Integration
+## Windows
+### Development installer "nightlies"
+
+A huge improvements is that we wrote rules so that our Continuous
+Integration platform creates installers.
+
+This is very useful for having users test regularly code so we set up a
+weekly installer creation (the full process takes about 2 hours, so we
+didn't want to trigger it too often).
+
+If you want to test the last "nightly" (common name used to call these
+development builds, even when they end up not being on a daily
+schedule), you can:
+
+1. Go to GIMP's [scheduled pipelines
+   listing](https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/pipeline_schedules)
+   and click the "**Last Pipeline**" ID listed next to the *Windows
+   installer* item.
+2. Select the job named "*win-installer-nightly*"
+3. Click the "*Browse*" button
+4. Navigate to the `build/windows/installer/_Output/` directory
+5. Finally click the `gimp-2.99.*-setup.exe` file to download and install it.
+
+This procedure or any updated version of it is available in the
+"*Automatic development builds*" section of the [download
+page](https://www.gimp.org/downloads/devel/).
+
+⚠️ Be warned that a nightly being purely automated builds, without any
+human verification and happening at a semi-random time during the
+development process, you may end up with very broken software at times
+(even though we try to never leave the repository in a dire state).
+It is even less safe than development releases. People are welcome to
+test our nightlies to help us with feedbacks and bug reports, but you
+should not expect these builds to be considered as anything finale or
+even usable. ☢️
+
+### Release installer automated
+
+Additionally to the nightly installers, our Continuous Integration
+platform will now also generate the installer when a new release is
+tagged. The only part of the installer creation process which is not
+automated is the file digital signature.
+
+Digital signing will be done manually by our long-term Windows installer
+maintainer, Jernej Simončič, who will download and verify thoroughly the
+installer before signing it. This way, you should get the best of the
+reactivity allowed by automation with human-verified software.
+
+This should allow much faster installer releases, within hours instead
+of days in former fully manual process.
+
+*Note: this semi-automated release process is only for our development
+branch; it will be used in the stable branch when we will release GIMP
+3.0.*
+
+### Consistency of the installer scripts
+
+Additionally to the automation of Windows installer, we added some
+additional tests for verifying installer script consistency. In
+particular, translations are handled by the [GNOME translator
+teams](https://l10n.gnome.org/module/gimp/) and we sometimes get new
+languages which are not properly listed by the installer (by the past,
+we announced some new installer languages which could not be found in
+the released installer! 😅).
+
+Our Continuous Integration will now warn us when such a case happen
+again, so that none's work is wasted and all new translations are
+properly used by the installer.
+
+## Linux
+
+Similarly to the Windows installer nightlies, GIMP now gets a **nightly
+flatpak**, i.e. a flatpak built out of development code, entirely
+automated and running on a weekly schedule.
+
+Install the nightly repository to get our weekly updates with this
+command:
+
+> flatpak install --user https://nightly.gnome.org/repo/appstream/org.gimp.GIMP.flatpakref
+
+ℹ If you installed both the `stable`, `beta` (development releases) and
+`master` (nightlies) repositories, your desktop will only see one at once.
+You may select exactly which version it sees and start with the following
+command (e.g. selecting `stable` as default):
+
+> flatpak make-current --user org.gimp.GIMP stable
+
+Then if `stable` was made to be your default GUI-run GIMP, you may run
+the other versions with the following command line (e.g. the nightlies):
+
+> flatpak run org.gimp.GIMP//master
+
+*These information are also available in the the [download page](https://www.gimp.org/downloads/devel/).*
+
+⚠️ Be warned that a nightly being purely automated builds, without any
+human verification and happening at a semi-random time during the
+development process, you may end up with very broken software at times
+(even though we try to never leave the repository in a dire state).
+It is even less safe than development releases. People are welcome to
+test our nightlies to help us with feedbacks and bug reports, but you
+should not expect these builds to be considered as anything finale or
+even usable. ☢️
+
+## macOS
+
+Finally an exciting news for macOS users: we recently got a new active
+contributor, Lukas Oberhuber, who started to work on the development
+package. They already have a working local build and are still in the
+process of tweaking the remote automated build. It means we might have
+finally our first macOS development release (hopefully for GIMP 2.99.8)
+soon.
+
+Additionally they already contributed code fixes in GIMP source as well,
+not only package scripts, which was direly needed for macOS.
+
+I would not advise to hold your breath, but this is still excellent
+news. This does not invalidate the call for more macOS contributors we
+have made many times lately. A single contributor (furthermore for both
+packaging and development!) is a very low [bus
+factor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor). The more
+contributors, the better, so if you want to help in order to ensure
+sustainability of the macOS package, you are still very welcome.
+
+## Label usage in merge requests
+
+Additionally to being able to test validated code, it can be useful at
+times to facilitate in-review code testing.
+
+This is why the Continuous Integration scripts were also modified to
+build automatically a test Windows installer and/or flatpak (as
+standalone package, no flatpak repository) for any contributed *Merge
+Request* if we add the `5. Windows Installer` and/or `5. Flatpak
+package` respectively.
+
+This can be a powerful tool for having faster feedbacks with new
+contributors and non-developers willing to test new features or complex
+bug fixes.
+
+## Contribution process
+
+GIMP source repository now provides a very nice first draft of [Coding
+style guide](https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/blob/master/CODING_STYLE.md),
+written by Stanislav Grinkov, based on the main current guidelines (some
+of them used to be written in the `HACKING` file, with few details, many
+more were either passed down through discussion channels and patch
+reviews or by looking at existing code).
+
+There is no doubt that this guide can still be improved as we do love
+very neat and organized code. In any case, this is a very nice first
+version.
+
+# GEGL and babl
+
+TODO
+
+# Downloading GIMP 2.99.8
+
+As usual GIMP 2.99.8 is available on [GIMP official website
+(gimp.org)](https://www.gimp.org/downloads/devel/):
+
+* The Linux development flatpak has already been published so that
+  anyone who installed it previously should have an update proposed by
+  their software manager (or from terminal: `flatpak update
+  org.gimp.GIMP//beta`).
+
+* The Windows installer is already available too, very quickly thanks to
+  the [new installer release process](#release-installer-automated).
+
+* The macOS DMG package will hopefully be published [*soonish*](#macos).
+
+# Team news
+## Developers
+
+Daniel Novomeskỳ is now a core developer with git access, for their
+continuous follow-up contributions to the HEIF/HEIC/AVIF plug-in as well
+as the brand new JPEG XL plug-in.
+
+*Code contributors on GIMP 2.99.8*: TODO
+
+*Build contributors on GIMP 2.99.8*: TODO
+
+## Translators
+
+Among the 84 languages for which GIMP 2.99.8 is available, X
+translations were updated: TODO
+
+The development Windows installer now contains Portuguese and Lithuanian
+translations, making it available in 38 languages.
+
+*Translators on GIMP 2.99.8*: TODO
+
+# What's next
+
+TODO
+
+Don't forget you can [donate to the project and personally fund several
+GIMP developers](https://www.gimp.org/donating/), as a way to give back
+and accelerate the development of GIMP. As you know, the [maintainers of
+GEGL and GIMP are crowdfunding to be able to work full-time on free
+software](https://www.gimp.org/news/2021/07/27/support-gimp-developers-sustainable-development/). 🥳