Since a day has elapsed and I haven't gotten any bites on vips and nip, I decided I should prepare a quick 5-minute demo. :-) nip is a little counter-intuitive when you first open it up, but it's very powerful and easy to use once you get the hang of it. The demo script I've prepared here should take less than five minutes to go through, and you'll probably start to see the real power of the application within the first minute. I hope someone will take five minutes to go through the demo so they can see how great this software is, and hopefully decide it's worth having in Debian. Once you've gotten sucked in, maybe you'll want to spend a little more time playing with it. I've attached three files: steps.txt, 1.tif, and 2.png. (The images are tiny -- less than 2K each.) Create an empty directory, save the attachments in it, cd to that directory and follow the instructions in steps.txt. You'll have to install the nip package first (of course), which also requires libvips7.8. These are on mentors.debian.net, so if your sources.list contains at least deb http://mentors.debian.net/debian unstable main you can just apt-get install nip. One other quick note: my nip package does install a debian menu file so, if you are using a menu system, you can select Apps -> Graphics -> nip. In this case, you'll have to change directories in the file loading menu to find the files, of course. Below appears my original RFS for reference. This will save you even more time because you won't have to looking for my previous message. :-) In case it isn't clear, I think this is a really good program. Rather than nagging or expecting people to drop everything and invest time and energy in this, I'm trying to make it as easy and painless as possible for someone to evaluate this program. My hope is that someone will be impressed enough with this software to want to sponsor it, hopefully soon enough for it to make it into sarge. Then they'll look at my packaging and either decide to accept it as is or make some constructive comments which I can turn around quickly. Thanks again! Original RFS below. ------------------------- I have packaged [1] vips and nip. The packages can be found on mentors.debian.net (details follow). All packages are lintian clean and were built in an up-to-date pbuilder environment. I have locally installed and tested the packages. 1. http://www.vips.ecs.soton.ac.uk The following introductory text, largely lifted from the vips web site, briefly describes the software: VIPS is a free image processing system. It is good with large images (images larger than the amount of RAM in your machine), and for working with colour. VIPS consists of two main components: an image processing library, and a spreadsheet-like graphical user interface, available in the nip package. The nip program is really quite remarkable, and has functionality unlike what I've seen any other packages. This is most certainly not just another image viewer or manipulation program. With this program, you can form complex pipelines of image operations using a spreadsheet-like user interface. The resulting images are updated dynamically as parameters are changed. One of the more interesting features here is mosaic assembly. I have used this successfully to create "seamless" scanned images out of parts scanned on my 8.5x11 flatbed scanner. Also, nip can work on very large images and is quite efficient. I was able to do manipulations on 9 300-dpi 24-bit color 8.5 x 11 images simultaneously without any observable lag. I have discussed my interest in packaging vips and nip for Debian with the upstream maintainers, who are enthusiastic about this possibility. There are packages for vips and nip for some other distributions including gentoo. An [2] RFS for this package already existed. I retitled the RFS to an ITP and posted a little bit of additional information. 2. http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=188478 There are two source packages: vips7.8 and nip. The vips7.8 package creates four binary packages (shown here with their i386 names): libvips7.8-dev_7.8.14-1_i386.deb libvips7.8-doc_7.8.14-1_all.deb libvips7.8-tools_7.8.14-1_i386.deb libvips7.8_7.8.14-1_i386.deb The nip package creates a single binary package: nip_7.8.14-1_i386.deb The vips package has the version number built into the package name because it creates and installs a shared library. Unfortunately, the library version is 0.0.0, but the upstream maintainers have fixed this and are now using sensible shared library naming conventions. To my knowledge, they are not using versioned symbols, though I may take this issue up with them (particularly after this whole tiff fiasco). vips 7.10.0 is out, but it is considered a beta release. The upstream maintainers expressed a preference for having 7.8.14 packaged for Debian for now rather than 7.10.0. The new version of nip is now called nip2. It uses gtk2.0 instead of gtk+. I will package those in a few months when they are considered stable by upstream and have documentation. Clearly they will not be ready in time for sarge. I'm hoping someone will sponsor these packages and upload them soon. They need to be uploaded fairly quickly to make it into sarge. Any feedback on the packaging is, of course, appreciated so that if I need to make changes, there is still time. Since nip build depends upon libvips7.8-dev (which depends upon libvips7.8), a gap of a day or two should be left between uploading vips and uploading nip. A few final notes: I am on the [3] NM queue but have not yet been assigned an AM, so I have some time to go yet. I am currently maintaining the xerces packages (xerces23, xerces24, xerces25, and libxml-xerces-perl) as a member of the debian-sgml-xml group on alioth. I am listed as a co-maintainer of those packages, though I am presently the only person actively working on them. As for vips and nip, I am not associated with the packages in any way other than being a user. 3. http://nm.debian.org/nmstatus.php?email=ejb%40ql.org Thanks for your support. If no one steps up to sponsor these packages within a couple of days, I will ask two people who have sponsored uploads for me before, but I'm hoping someone who is interested in image manipulation software will take a look at these. I don't want to seem impatient, which is why I mention this up front. I'm only trying to act quickly because of the looming sarge freeze. :-) -- Jay Berkenbilt <ejb@ql.org> http://www.ql.org/q/
Attachment:
1.tif
Description: TIFF image
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2.png
Description: PNG image
Run nip & Insert -> Image From File Change file type from "VIPS image files" to "TIFF image files" select "1.tif" Insert -> Image From File Change file type from "VIPS image files" to "PNG image files" select "2.png" Double click the image portion of A2 to open the A2 image window CTRL-left click near the upper-left corner but stil in the gray drag all the way to the lower-right corner This creates A3 Close the A2 image window (File -> Quit, or use the window manager) Hold the mouse over A2. Notice A3 turns medium blue, showing child relationship Click on A3. Notice A2 turns dark blue, showing parent relationship Double-click on image portion of A1 to open A1 window Double-click on image portion of A3 to open A3 window In A1, CTRL-left click on some point that is common to the two images, for example somewhere on the "a". This creates point A4. In A3, CTRL-left click on APPROXIMATELY the same point. It doesn't need to be super-exact, so eyeballing it is okay. This creates point A5. Close A1 and A3. Now left click on the label "A4" and CTRL-left click on "A5" so that both labels are green. This is selecting these points as arguments. In the right-side menu, select Mosaic -> Mosaic_Translate -> Left_Right This creates image A6: a "stitched" version of the image. Double click A6 to open the A6 window CTRL-left click near the upper-left corner in the gray and drag to near the lower-right corner within the gray so the entire selected region is in the gray. This creates region A7. Close A6. Single click A7 so the label turns green. On the right-side menu, select Colour -> RGB_to -> Mono Click A8. In right menu, select Filter -> Emboss Right click A9, select Save..., type final.jpg Main menu -> File -> Save workspace: enter "potato", click "save" Exit (File -> Quit) Now look at final.jpg in your favorite viewer. Restart nip: nip potato.ws & There's your whole workspace again Double click A6 and A9. Move or the A7 region in A6. Watch A9 update dynamically!
