Whither Krita?

[Boudewijn Rempt]

On Thursday 24 September 2009, Moritz Moeller wrote:

> I think "from scratch" is exaggerating greatly. I made two propsals. One
> is for a node based core.
> The other was for procedural bushes.
> Neither requires the other to be implemented. Procedural brushes bring
> many advances, even w/o a node-based core.

It should be easy enough to start writing a layer type for krita that takes 
nodes and activates a procedural brush tool -- we also have vector layers and 
used to have document layers. Anything that can be rendered down to pixels can 
be a layer type.

> As for the latter. This would indeed mean replacing the core with a node
> system. I don't know how well abstracted interaction of the core is, for
> any part of Krita making use of it.
>
> But if it was abstraced sufficiently, replacing the core and providing
> backwards compatibility to keep a big chunk of the exisiting code that
> is non-core, should be possible.

The current layer system is definitely not abstracted away :-). The code is 
full of things like view->activeNode()->paintDevice()->createHlineIterator();

> Because a layer baed system can easily be expressed in a node-based system.
> The reverse is btw not true. Photosop tries hard these days, having now
> smart-objects and cascaded layer groups. But this is still far from the
> flexibility of a node based system.
> 
> > And I know that I lack the skills to setup such a project and get it
> > anywhere meaningful :-(
> 
> Which one? Node-based core or procedural brushes. I can help out with
> how to implement these. I am really sorry that I don't have more time, I
> would love to write a reference implememtation of procedural brushes at
> least.

Both! I might be able to setup a basic acyclic graph library that looks a bit 
like gegl, because I can crib, but I didn't understand much of the links in 
your previous mail. And I downloaded the apps you mentioned (except for aqsis, 
their website was broken), but you're dealing with someone who is working on a 
graphics app because he wants to paint on his computer, not someone who who 
knows anything about graphics. I'm not even capable of coding a basic brush 
stroke 
(http://rempt.xs4all.nl/fading/index.cgi/hacking/krita/learning_cpp.comment).

> I can also assure you that neither is any harder to implement than
> anything Krita does currently. :)
> A node based core is cretainly a lot of work. Really a lot. Procedural
> brushes aren't

Is gegl a real node-based core? That took forever, longer than Krita, 
actually.
-- 
Boudewijn Rempt | http://www.valdyas.org