Plug-Ins and Scripting CHAPTER 11
Plug-Ins and Scripting CHAPTER 11 The GIMP is a supremely flexible image-editing program. But sometimes you may need to do something unusual, something that isn t built-in. Or maybe you just need to do the same repetitive operation over and over on many different images. Either way, don t give up just because the function you need isn t in the menus anywhere. GIMP s flexible architecture means it s very easy to add plug-ins and scripts to do nearly anything you need to do. There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of plug-ins readily available. But if you can t find one to do what you need, you can even write your own, using a choice of several different languages. Many plug-ins are written in the C programming language, the same language used to write GIMP itself. But other plug-ins are actually scripts. Scripts are a special type of plug-in, a type that doesn t need any special compiler software. The GIMP supports three scripting languages, Script-Fu, Python, and Perl, in varying degrees. You ll learn more about the differences later in this chapter. Scripts are especially easy to write, which has three benefits: It s easy for other people to write them, so there s a good chance you can find a script to do what you need. It s easy to read them, so if you can find a script that s similar to what you need, you might be able to modify it for your purposes. It s not very hard to write a script from scratch. So let s take a look at what all this means. You ll learn how to find and install plug-ins, and how to find out which plug-ins you already have installed. You ll also learn how to find scripts, install them, read them, and modify them. And finally, you ll learn how to write a new script from scratch to automate some simple but useful operations. The chapter will cover the following topics: Installing plug-ins Writing GIMP scripts User interface options for scripts A Python script
You want to have a cheap webhost for your apache application, then check apache web hosting services.