NEWS.pre-3-0

                   ------------------------------
                   GNU Image Manipulation Program
                         Development Branch
                   ------------------------------

This used to be the development branch that lead to GIMP 3.0.


Overview of Changes from GIMP 3.0.0-RC3 to GIMP 3.0.0
=====================================================

Core:

  - Blacklisted GEGL operations:
    * gegl:pack
    * json:dropshadow
    * json:grey2
  - Add support for uncompressed 16 bit ABR brushes.
  - Get rid of different code paths for exiting GIMP depending on being
    a release build or not. Now we always exit GIMP the clean way.
  - Core GEGL operations with a "gimp:menu-path" will now have a
    generated help ID, constructed from the operation's name.
  - Render-after-filters is used when selecting by color.
  - When drag'n dropping items containing groups and descendant, just
    drop the group with all descendants.
  - Merging pass-through group layers now merges the actual render of
    the group (which contains the rendering of layers *below* the group
    too, by definition). This way, the rendering is the same before and
    after merging the group (though it will get rid of more layers than
    other mode merging would do).

Tools:

  - Text tool:
    * bold/italic buttons don't mean necessarily "faux" bold or italic
      (respectively) anymore, because it is different from 2.10 where it
      may mean real bold/italic variant for the font, if available. We
      might get back to these buttons meaning only the "faux" styles
      (since the actual variants are also available through the font
      list so you have both worlds) later, but for now, we want to make
      sure we don't break rendering of existing XCF files.
    * In font list, we use the "family style" as display name when
      available which is often more suitable for display than the
      "fullname".

Graphical User Interface:

  - Long file names are now ellipsized in the File and Windows submenus.

Plug-ins:

  - Script-Fu:
    * Improve Script-Fu progress notifications.
    * Added wrapper (gimp-pdb-procedure-exists) to the corresponding
      libgimp function.
    * Progress report for every called PDB procedure now only happens
      automatically for scripts running over "extension-script-fu". The
      new independent Script-Fu plug-ins in particular should use
      (gimp-progress-set-text) like plug-ins in other programming
      languages.
  - JPEG:
    * When using jpeg-turbo >= 3.0.0, loading 12 and 16bpc JPEG is
      now supported.
    * Some options in the export dialog are now displayed in a second
      column to avoid overlong dialog.
  - FLI: fixing ZDI-CAN-25100.
  - ICNS: PNG-based ICNS files now support color profiles at loading and
    exporting.

API:

  - Changes in libgimp:
    * Default sensitivity masks:
      + for image procedures: GIMP_PROCEDURE_SENSITIVE_DRAWABLE | GIMP_PROCEDURE_SENSITIVE_DRAWABLES
      + for other procedures: GIMP_PROCEDURE_SENSITIVE_ALWAYS
    * gimp_procedure_is_core() renamed gimp_procedure_is_internal()

Build:

  - More robust InnoSetup scripts grabbing data directly from meson.
  - New -Ddebug-self-in-build meson option for debugging the in-build
    GIMP runs with gdb.
  - Debian package images are now created in the dependency job building
    babl and GEGL.
  - Depends on babl 0.1.112 and GEGL 0.4.56.
  - More file format testing in the test-plug-ins infrastructure.


Overview of Changes from GIMP 3.0.0-RC2 to GIMP 3.0.0-RC3
=========================================================

Core:

  - Filters:
    * Apply noninteractive filters direct to drawable.
    * Gamma hack removed.
    * Filter names are not stored in XCF anymore unless it was
      explicitly set.
    * Major image graph update so that we don't cast back to storage
      pixel format in-between filters making non-destructive filters a
      lot more powerful. We now only cast during preview of filters when
      "Merge filter" checkbox is checked.
    * More image graph update: we only crop before the first effect on a
      filter stack for a given drawable. Further pre-crops are now no-op
      nodes.
  - More robust program loading even on systems with no fonts at all.
  - Various missing help-ids added.
  - The debugging infrastructure was not getting backtraces for all
    threads (only the main thread) since 2.99.10 because of a hanging
    bug in gdb. This is now reverted as a test.
  - Reworking of projection flushing to make it thread-safe (e.g. when
    projection updates are requested from the "paint" thread).
  - Improved support for cloud providers' file loading.
  - Dashboard: performance log filenames now contain the timestamp in
    ISO-8601 basic format.

Graphical User Interface:

  - Show icons in Tips Dialog on Windows.
  - Add Help buttons to About/Tips/Welcome dialogs.
  - macOS: open files from Finder on macOS 15 (Sonoma) and higher with
    new implementation.
  - Various theming tweaks improving usability.
  - Don't show Release Notes in Welcome dialog when none exist.
  - Various icons now have RTL variants (by inverting the opposite
    icons, e.g. go-next/go-previous).
  - Various usability improvements.

Plug-ins:

  - DDS:
    * Various improvements to BGR8 and other formats.
    * New support for importing DDS BC7 compression.
  - BMP: various import improvements and code cleanup.
  - EXR: more robust EXR file import, especially regarding invalid files
    (e.g. fuzzed ones).
  - Script-Fu:
    * new named argument syntax for non-core (i.e. plug-in
      created) PDB procedures allowing arguments to be set in any order
      and more semantically.
    * The new named argument syntax can also be used for arguments of
      filters (though string still works as there is no confusion
      possible with another syntax).
    * SF-FILENAME and SF-DIRNAME args now create a GimpParamSpecFile
      argument with the proper action type.
    * Script-Fu third-party scripts using the standalone interpreter can
      now be localized properly with the same default logic as other
      plug-ins.
  - PSD:
    * Metadata export now supported.
    * 16-bit per channel LAB PSD are now supported at import.
    * PSD compatibility messages are now selectable for easy copy-paste.
    * Store proper merged image when exporting CMYK PSD files.
  - All plug-ins with a GFile argument now use a GimpParamSpecFile spec.
  - JPEG-XL: export options were simplified:
    * CMYK is always saved as lossless: lossy CMYK is discouraged by
      libjxl developers and results in visible artifacts.
    * "Save original profile" option is removed. We now simply follow
      the profile settings of the image.
  - ICNS:
    * ipc4, ipc5, and ipc6 type ICNS icons do not render well when
      included in an app as part of a bundle. We now use older is32,
      il32, and ih32 24-bit RGB formats (with 8 bit masks) instead of
      the newer PNG formats for those sized icons.
    * Support loading ARGB ICNS icons.
    * Support loading pre-OSX ICNS with no masks.

API:

  - Changes in libgimpbase:
    * Creation time metadata are added (for various tags in IPTC, XMP
      and Exif) when first creating a new image.
    * New functions:
      + gimp_metadata_set_creation_date() allowing to set a custom creation date.
      + gimp_param_spec_file_get_action()
      + gimp_param_spec_file_set_action()
      + gimp_param_spec_file_none_allowed()
      + gimp_param_spec_unit_percent_allowed()
      + gimp_param_spec_unit_pixel_allowed()
      + gimp_param_spec_core_object_array_get_object_type()
      + gimp_param_spec_value_array_get_element_spec()
      + gimp_param_spec_choice_get_choice()
      + gimp_param_spec_choice_get_default()
    * New GimpFileChooserAction enum type.
    * New GimpParamSpecFile param spec type.
  - Changes in libgimp:
    * New functions:
      + gimp_procedure_is_core()
      + gimp_param_spec_resource_defaults_to_context()
      + gimp_param_spec_resource_none_allowed()
      + gimp_param_spec_display_none_allowed()
      + gimp_param_spec_drawable_filter_none_allowed()
      + gimp_param_spec_image_none_allowed()
      + gimp_param_spec_item_none_allowed()
    * gimp_pdb_query() doesn't return private PDB procedures anymore.
    * The various "save-*" PDB procedure arguments for export plug-ins
      were renamed to "include-*" and made public.
    * gimp_file_save_thumbnail() renamed gimp_file_create_thumbnail()
      and now supporting when the file is the export or import image.
    * GFile arguments are now stored as URI rather than path in config
      files.
    * gimp_procedure_dialog_get_widget() now supports GimpParamSpecUnit
      arguments.
    * Filters based off GIMP-made GEGL operations with a custom
      configuration object are now configurable through the PDB/libgimp,
      like any other filters.
    * Filters created by libgimp are always set as "unclipped".
      Functions to control this settings will likely happen after 3.0.0
      release.
    * Compat PDB-only procedure plug-in-autocrop is now transformed to
      proper gimp-image-autocrop procedure with corresponding libgimp
      function gimp_image_autocrop().
    * Compat PDB-only procedure plug-in-autocrop-layer is now
      transformed to proper gimp-image-autocrop-selected-layers
      procedure with corresponding libgimp function
      gimp_image_autocrop_selected_layers().
    * Both the new autocrop procedures now allow a NULL input drawable
      and will use the image for determining cropping extents in this
      case.
  - Changes in libgimpwidgets:
    * New GimpFileChooser widget.
    * New functions:
      +  gimp_file_chooser_get_action()
      +  gimp_file_chooser_get_file()
      +  gimp_file_chooser_get_label()
      +  gimp_file_chooser_get_label_widget()
      +  gimp_file_chooser_get_title()
      +  gimp_file_chooser_get_type()
      +  gimp_file_chooser_new()
      +  gimp_file_chooser_set_action()
      +  gimp_file_chooser_set_file()
      +  gimp_file_chooser_set_label()
      +  gimp_file_chooser_set_title()
      +  gimp_prop_file_chooser_new()
  - Changes in libgimpui:
    * GimpProcedureDialog now create automatically a GimpFileChooser
      with UI adapted to the requested action for the argument (through
      gimp_procedure_dialog_get_widget()), such as opening/creating a
      file/folder.
    * Removed functions:
      + gimp_procedure_dialog_get_file_chooser()

Translations:

  - New Swedish language support for the Windows installer.

Build:

  - Massive cleanup of useless dependencies and adding back some missing
    runtime dependencies in CI and packages.
  - In-build GIMP process is now run through gdb (when available) to
    help debug crashes of GIMP during the build.
  - API docs now use the development logo.
  - New CMYK PAM tests (for test-file-plug-ins testing infrastructure).
  - Improve shared Docker Debian versioning in the CI and make it branch
    aware.
  - Crossbuild jobs are back in CI and with UCRT.
  - Meson option -Dg-ir-doc was removed.
  - No build attempt to use build caching in CI. It was just making
    problems with no clear gain.
  - AppImage packages (x86_64 and AArch64) are now official packages.
  - MS Store version is now automatically uploaded through the CI.
  - Minimum dependency requirement update: GEGL 0.4.54.


Overview of Changes from GIMP 3.0.0-RC1 to GIMP 3.0.0-RC2
=========================================================

Core:

  - Histogram now takes into account the image color space for more
    correct results.
  - Unsupported fonts stderr message is not shown anymore on stable
    builds as it is confusing to people (who see often huge numbers,
    because there are indeed a lot of font types, especially the legacy
    bitmap fonts whose support got broked by Pango, which are not
    supported by GIMP, at least for now).
  - Drag'n drop color fills now forbidden when "Allow editing on
    non-visible layers" is OFF and the target layer is set invisible.
  - Improved font matching heuristic for old XCF files, to find the
    closest font candidate.
  - The "RGB (perceptual)" blend/composite space got renamed "RGB (from
    color space)" and a new/real "RGB (perceptual)" blend/composite
    space was added.
  - The following layer modes' default blend space was changed to the
    new "RGB (perceptual)" space: Overlay, Screen, Difference, Dodge,
    Burn, Hard light, Soft light, Grain extract, Grain merge, Vivid
    light, Pin light, Linear light, Hard mix, Exclusion and Linear burn.
    It doesn't break existing XCF files since the actual blend space
    used is stored in the file (even when left to "Auto", the XCF format
    knows what "Auto" meant at save time).

Graphical User Interface:

  - "Check for Updates" button is not shown in About dialog anymore when
    "check-release" build option is FALSE.
  - Stable (or stable-like such as RCs) builds should not open the debug
    console on Windows.
  - Some "Default" icon theme icons are used within the "Legacy" icon
    theme when missing there, as a temporary workaround to avoid missing
    icons ugliness.
  - "Layer Name" field in the Layer dialogue is now explicitly focused
    on dialog creation (this was the case in 2.10, but there it was
    probably "by chance", now it's "by design") because layer names is
    often the most common thing people want to change in this dialog.
    So it allows quick workflow of opening the dialog, typing a layer
    name and hitting Enter.
  - GimpSpinScale CSS styling improved for better readability.
  - Color Profile labels in the GimpColorSelect widget are now
    ellipsized to prevent over-wide container widgets/dockables when an
    image has a profile with a long name.
  - GimpStatusBar is now aware of icon size changes (soft-proofing
    buttons and current tool icons are resized when relevant).
  - GimpHandleBar now uses the system's foreground color for its
    outline.
  - New RC2 splash screen by Sevenix.
  - New icons: view-shrink-wrap, view-zoom-fill.
  - Updated icons: zoom-fit, zoom-in, zoom-original, zoom-out.

Plug-ins:

  - Python Console:
    * PageUp/Down usable as alternate of Up/Down to scroll history.
    * Ctrl-R and Ctrl-S are now usable for searching respectively
      backward and forward through the console command history, with
      nice prompt-updating visual feedback.
  - BMP import overhaul (for more details, see informative commit
    messages in !1932 since this MR got mistakenly squashed into a
    single commit):
    * 8/16/32 bit-per-channel, int or float, are now imported lossessly
      into the corresponding precision.
    * New support for 2-bit indexed and ALPHABITFIELDS files.
    * More lenient with regards to file header specs.
    * Correctly identify OS/2 Huffman encoding.
    * Add RLE24 support (RLE24 is a OS/2 variant of bmp compression).
    * Add Huffman compression support (another compression variant for
      OS/2 bmps). The source code contains a human readable version of
      the Huffman code tables (generate-huffman.h). During build, the
      actual header huffman.h is generated which includes a digested
      form of these tables.
    * Load bmp chunk-wise instead of whole image: loads image
      tile-height lines at a time to reduce memory allocation for
      temporary image buffer.
    * Unify RLE24 with RLE4/8 decoding.
    * RLE: add alpha channel for undefined pixels: RLE-bmps can have
      undefined pixels. Load those bmps with an alpha channel
      (GIMP_INDEXEDA_IMAGE) and make undefined pixels transparent.
    * Convert gamma/endpoint values in V4 headers to floating point.
    * Various fixes and code reorganization.
  - Metadata viewer now correctly shows various custom brand markernote
    tags as interpreted strings (instead of opaque bytes).
  - CMYK PAM files can now be imported.
  - Windows shortcut (.link): new plug-in file-lnk (Windows-only) to
    support loading shortcuts. This is mostly a wrapper plug-in like the
    file-compressor one which redirects to the correct plug-in for the
    specific image type.
  - Script-fu:
    * Do not warn anymore on not exact argument count for
      PDB-marshalled procedures (it becomes an info message).
    * Script-fu dialogs are now properly activated on macOS through
      platform-specific code.
    * On macOS, a script-fu dock icon is now only shown when a script
      has a dialog.
    * GimpDrawableFilter's IDs are now usable to take full advantage of
      the various new PDB procedures working on filters.
    * Adding a few custom wrappers to libgimp (non-PDB) functions:
      - gimp-drawable-merge-new-filter: variable argument procedure
        working like libgimp gimp_drawable_merge_new_filter().
      - gimp-drawable-append-new-filter: variable argument procedure
        working like libgimp gimp_drawable_append_new_filter().
      - gimp-drawable-filter-configure: wrapping getting a
        GimpDrawableFilterConfig and setting its properties as a
        variable arg script-fu procedure.
      - gimp-drawable-merge-filter: wrapping
        gimp_drawable_merge_filter().
      - gimp-drawable-append-filter: wrapping
        gimp_drawable_append_filter().
      - gimp-drawable-filter-set-aux-input: wrapping
        gimp_drawable_filter_set_aux_input().
  - PSD: legacy Color Overlay layer styles (legacy 'sofi' data) are now
    loaded by GIMP as Color Overlay layer filters.

API:

  - Changes in libgimp:
    * gimp_drawable_offset() signature changed, with an added GeglColor
      argument used when the fill_type is GIMP_OFFSET_COLOR.
    * New GimpDrawableFilter and GimpDrawableFilterConfig classes. These
      come with ability to create/destroy a filter and various methods
      to configure filters, then either append them to the list of
      non-destructive filters of a layer, or merge them on any drawable.
    * Auxiliary input pads are also supported for GimpDrawableFilter,
      though filters with aux input can only be merged (same as in the
      GUI), not applied non-destructively for the time being.
    * New methods:
      - gimp_drawable_get_filters()
      - gimp_drawable_append_filter()
      - gimp_drawable_merge_filter()
      - gimp_drawable_append_new_filter()
      - gimp_drawable_merge_new_filter()
    * GIMP_LAYER_MODE_REPLACE is now visible/usable in libgimp and PDB
     as part of the GimpLayerMode enum type.
  - Changes in libgimpbase:
    * GimpOffsetType changed: GIMP_OFFSET_BACKGROUND value replaced with
      GIMP_OFFSET_COLOR.
    * Exif.SonyMisc3c tags are now excluded at export because they cause
      a failure of Exiv2 which was having all metadata export fail (see
      issue #2670 on Exiv2 tracker).
  - Changes in PDB:
    * All compat PDB procedures which were special-casing specific GEGL
      operations have now been removed. Any usage of these in various
      scripts and plug-ins has been replaced by the new
      GimpDrawableFilter generic API.
    * GeglParamSeed can now be passed through the PDB so that filters
      with a seed argument work as expected.
    * Compat PDB procedures plug-in-rotate deleted and its usage in
      scripts replaced with gimp-image-rotate or
      gimp-item-transform-rotate-simple.

Build:

  - So many build and packaging improvements that we can't list them
    all. :-D
  - Our AppImage now supports much more distributions, though we still
    consider it experimental.
  - AppImage build is now a weekly scheduled job.
  - Several unit tests improved with better UI-testing API.
  - Pango >= 1.55.0 is now recommended on macOS because of fix pango!745
    which fixes a major GUI issue on this platform.
  - CI job logs now have collapsed sections for better readability.
  - The Windows Installer will not check for SSE anymore since SSE2
    instructions are required already for any supported Windows
    versions.
  - The app-ID of our nightly flatpak (on gnome-nightly repository) is
    now "org.gimp.GIMP.Nightly". This will allow the nightly flatpak to
    be side-by-side visible next to the stable or dev flatpak without
    needed CLI commands.
  - AppImage also have its own app-ID too: "org.gimp.GIMP.Continuous"
  - Windows installer now defaults to user-mode installs, which is the
    recommended defaults by Microsoft since Windows 7. It is obviously
    still possible to install system-wide, but won't be the defaults
    anymore.
  - There is now also an Aarch64 AppImage.
  - Minimum dependency version bump: GEGL 0.4.52.


Overview of Changes from GIMP 2.99.18 to GIMP 3.0.0-RC1
=======================================================

Core:

  - Conversion to Indexed:
    * color precision increased;
    * error diffusion in linear RGB while keeping palette generation as
      CIE Lab.
  - GIMP's GEGL operations:
    * Posterize operates with a perceptual gamma;
    * Threshold: processing with non-linear RGB;
    * Hue-Saturation: using HSLA float as processing space which should be
      quicker than previous implementation.
  - Welcome dialog:
    * Multiple images can be selected and opened at once with Enter key.
    * "Show on Start" is now displayed specifically in the "Create" tab.
  - Non-destructive layer effects:
    * can now be applied on group layers;
    * cannot be reordered anymore while being edited.
  - More GimpRGB code replaced by GeglColor (space invasion).
  - New official software logo!
    See: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp-data/-/blob/main/images/logo/README.md
  - Internal procedures are not shown as search actions.
  - Non-destructive layer effects are copied together with the layer they belong
    to.
  - Accessibility: if the "Reduced Motion" (or other names for the same
    feature depending on OS/desktop) is checked in macOS, Windows, GNOME
    or KDE, then the following animations are disabled: animated credits
    in About dialog and some easter eggs.
  - New actions:
    * layers-select-flattened-previous: moving the selection up visually
      in the layers list.
    * layers-select-flattened-next: moving the selection down visually
      in the layers list.
  - The default icon for GimpViewable is now gimp-image rather than
    dialog-question. In particular this shows up in some interfaces like
    GEGL filters with aux nodes (when the aux input has not been chosen
    yet).
  - XCF 22: the GEGL Operation version is now stored for each layer
    filter.
  - GIMP doesn't quit when running non-interactively (i.e. as
    gimp-console or with --no-interface) without CLI option `--quit`.
    The process can be interrupted anytime with SIGINT (Ctrl-C) which
    will trigger a clean exit.
  - "Luma Lighten/Darken Only" default blend space is now linear
    (instead of perceptual).
  - execinfo.h (backtrace() API) is made non-mandatory on Linux, with
    proper meson summary showing that the Dashboard backtrace feature
    (performance logs) will not work.
  - `gimp -v` and crash debug dialog now contain Exiv2 and GExiv2
    version information.
  - XCF will now refuse to load some types of GEGL ops as
    non-destructive layer filters:
    * GeglOperationSink operations;
    * GEGL Graph ("gegl:gegl") except if the environment variable
      GIMP_ALLOW_GEGL_GRAPH_LAYER_EFFECT is set.
  - On UNIX-like OSes, at first startup, if a 2.10 folder was not found
    in the usual $XDG_CONFIG_HOME, we now lookup the flatpak folder
    ~/.var/app/org.gimp.GIMP/config/ so that we are able to migrate from
    a config created by a flatpak 2.10. Not only this, but we also look
    in /var/config/ which is a mount to the same folder, from the host,
    inside the flatpak sandbox. This way, both a 3.0 flatpak and
    non-flatpak will find the config of the 2.10 flatpak despite the
    change done to the flatpak manifest to always use $XDG_CONFIG_HOME
    (see Build section).

Tools:

  - Gradient tool: the "Repeat" mode "Truncate" has been renamed "None
    (truncate)" and reordered to be second in the list, just after "None
    (extend)".
  - Measure tool: guides can now be created off-canvas.
  - Scissors Select: consistently name the tool "Scissors Select" by
    dropping the alternate name "Intelligent Scissors" which was only
    used in menus.
  - GEGL filters:
    * new "Merge filter" checkbox in the dialog to directly apply a
      filter destructively (like in 2.10 and older).
    * Filters with aux nodes can only be merged (no non-destructive
      workflow possible for such filters yet).
    * Auxiliary nodes now have their nicer name printed in the GUI.
  - Paint Select tool now handles the standard Shift/Ctrl modifier for
    adding or subtracting to selection. The tool is still experimental
    and disabled by default though.
  - Color Balance and Hue-Saturation effects work in sRGB space.

Graphical User Interface:

  - New "gimp-effects" icon (used in the Layers dockable for non-destructive
    layer effects).
  - GimpSpinScale text area height is now reduced to improve usability (it is
    now easier to find the area to *grab* the scale vs. area to edit the text;
    the cursor changing helping to make out one from the other).
  - Some cleanups done with test plug-ins and scripts in menus.
  - Add option for "Huge" Preview Size in dockable menu.
  - Usage of Up/Down and PageUp/Down keys in items tree views are now
    multi-item selection aware. Up/Down keys select items in visual
    order, walking through item groups (in and out), except when they
    are collapsed. PageUp/Down keys select items while not leaving
    previously selected items' group level.
  - Dockbook: tab scrolling behavior (using scroll to switch between
    dockable tabs) which was removed from GtkNotebook in GTK+3 got
    reimplemented in our code.
  - Palette colors are shown in their own space.
  - GimpColorSelect widget (the default color selection tab on the left
    of the color selection dialog) now displays the selected color model
    (RGB, HSV or LCh) and not only the space/profile (the latter is not
    even displayed anymore in LCh which is CIELAB-based).
  - Legacy icon theme's tool icons are now all vector.

Plug-ins:

  - Plug-ins ported to GimpProcedureDialog: Warp, decompose,
    file-pdf-save-multi, qbist, file-xmc, file-tiff-load, file-icns,
    file-ico, lava.scm.
  - Script-Fu scripts ported to GimpProcedureDialog: addborder,
    blend-anim, burn-in-anim, carve-it, chrome-it, circuit, clothify,
    coffee, difference-clouds, distress-selection, drop-shadow,
    fuzzyborder, old-photo, perspective-shadow, round-corners,
    script-fu-set-cmap, selection-round, slide, unsharp-mask,
    waves-anim, weave, xach-effect.
  - PSD:
    * unsupported layers are not dropped anymore (they will usually show
      empty instead).
    * add warning when exporting multi-layer indexed image (layers will
      be merged because PSD does not support multi-layer indexed images,
      unlike XCF).
  - Script-Fu:
    * "Refresh Scripts" (Filters > Development > Script-Fu) is now hidden. It
      was broken and anyway not an ideal design choice.
    * New call-with-output-string, call-with-input-string and any->string
      functions.
    * SF-VALUE type was removed.
    * script-fu-register-procedure scheme function was added to create
      procedures which are not image procedure. These Scheme plug-ins
      will use GimpProcedureDialog. The legacy script-fu-register
      function still works but is considered deprecated.
    * Various plug-ins ported to script-fu-register-procedure:
      gimp-online, gradient-example, mkbrush, palette-export,
      paste-as-brush, paste-as-pattern, ts-helloworld.
    * Colors can now be represented as grayscale with a list of 1 or 2
      numerical values.
  - All "file-*-save" (and "file-*-save-internal) plug-in procedures have been
    renamed to "file-*-export" (respectively "file-*-export-internal").
  - Ported to GimpVectorLoadProcedure: file-pdf-load, file-ps, file-svg
    and file-wmf-load.
  - Arguments ported to GimpChoice in the following plug-ins:
    file-raw-data, file-jpeg, file-ps, decompose, blinds, curve-bend,
    file-pcx, file-pnm, file-psp, hot, jigsaw, nl-filter, fits,
    align-layer, border-average, contrast-retinex, despeckle,
    screenshot, file-gif-export, file-heif, file-jp2-load, file-jpegxl,
    file-mng, file-tga, file-bmp, file-sgi, file-webp.
  - New file-plug-in testing framework. It comes with Gitlab junit reports.
  - JPEG XL: half-float import support.
  - file-darktable: use the new API which darktable developed from us
    since version 4.6 (a new `--gimp` flag on command line). Fallback to
    old usage for older versions.
  - guides-new: guides can now be created off-canvas.
  - ImageMap: zoom factor is now floating point allowing zooming out
    past the 1:1 ratio.
  - TIFF:
    * Added support for loading Sketchbook TIFF layers.
  - Goat Exercises:
    * Renamed to "Plug-In Examples".
    * "Sphere v3..." is now "Plug-in example in Scheme", showing up the
      new types of Script-Fu scripts (with a standalone interpreter
      rather than as scripts running on the Script-Fu always-on
      extension). It is not the same as the historical Goat Exercises,
      but it is our best "new Script-Fu" example.
    * All other test plug-ins/scripts are hidden in stable releases.
  - GIH: max size increased to GIMP_MAX_IMAGE_SIZE.
  - Metadata Editor: add ability to set itself transient to any other
    window (even across process).
  - file-raw-data can now be run interactively.
  - The lua binding is now marked experimental because of the too many
    unstabilities we experienced.
  - Script-fu:
    * resource argument defaults are set as a string which is
      the name of a resource, or the empty string or "from context" to
      default to the context resource.
    * Various compat aliases to ancient PDB procedures were removed.
  - Python Console: history of commands is saved between runs.
  - BMP: new support for loading 64bpp BMPs. Each channel uses 13 bits
    (2^13 max value), so it's scaled to fit our 16 bit integer image
    mode.
  - gradient-save-as-css renamed python-fu-gradient-save-as-css and
    histogram-export renamed python-fu-histogram-export for consistent
    naming.
  - python-fu-eval is now robust to failing script. Instead of crashing
    too, it simply returns with a CALLING_ERROR status and pass along
    the Python error to the core for proper output.

API:

  - All public classes were marked as derivable or final through GObject
    macros G_DECLARE_(DERIVABLE|FINAL)_TYPE. It will make it easier to
    update them in the future without API/ABI breakage.
  - Changes in libgimp:
    * gimp_procedure_run_config() can run with no config objects (equivalent to
      run the procedure with default arguments).
    * New GimpParamColor type (obsoleting GeglParamColor within GIMP) which has
      the additional setting `has_alpha` to advertize whether your plug-in
      argument accepts only opaque colors or transparent ones (hence generated
      GUI can be set accordingly).
    * GimpSaveProcedure renamed to GimpExportProcedure.
    * GimpSaveProcedureDialog renamed to GimpExportProcedureDialog.
    * GimpExportProcedure does not have "drawables" and "num-drawables"
      arguments anymore: after much reflection, these arguments were
      mostly confusing and many plug-ins were already just using
      gimp_image_list_layers() instead. For future advanced usage which
      may come in the future, we will add a `GimpExportOptions` argument
      instead.
    * gimp_export_image() was simplified by removing the interactive
      case (which was already hidden hence unused anyway).
    * New GimpVectorLoadProcedure class: to be used specifically for
      vector-based formats. It will allow to share a common graphical
      interface (through the new GimpVectorLoadProcedureDialog), and
      will also allow the core application to know which export
      procedure is for a vector format, hence special-casing vector
      file handling.
    * GimpProcedureDialog: new fill_start() and fill_end() class methods
      which are ensured to be run exactly once, unlike fill_list().
    * gimp_image_add_(h|v)guide() functions can now create off-canvas
      guides (same as we can in GUI, now).
    * GimpChoice arguments can now generate a GimpIntRadioFrame as
      alternative widget in a GimpProcedureDialog (combo box is still
      the default widget).
    * All GIMP_PROC_ARG_*() macros are now proper gimp_procedure_add_*_argument()
      functions (same for aux argument and return value macros).
    * gimp_procedure_add_*_from_property() functions were removed.
    * gimp_procedure_add_argument(), gimp_procedure_add_aux_argument()
      and gimp_procedure_add_return_value() were removed from public API.
    * The skipping of _get_ functions by bindings in GIMP
      2.99.12, in favor of their _list_ variant, was reverted. Now the
      _list_ variants are skipped instead. The original reason was a
      limitation of pygobject which is now fixed, and since _get_
      functions are historically more common and consistent in our API,
      this is what should take precedence.
    * New GimpGroupLayer class (subclass of GimpLayer).
    * GimpVectors was renamed to GimpPath and all gimp_vectors_ function
      renamed gimp_path_ accordingly.
    * gimp_buffer_get_image_type() return type is now GimpImageBaseType.
    * New GimpExportOptions class and a better infrastructure to handle
      intermediate image creation at export, replacing
      gimp_export_image() with gimp_export_options_get_image(). This is
      also a preparation for future API allowing generic settings during
      export (resizing, cropping, adding filters or other actions at
      export time).
    * New functions:
      - gimp_window_set_transient_for()
      - gimp_palette_get_colormap()
      - gimp_palette_set_colormap()
      - gimp_image_set_palette()
      - gimp_context_get_emulate_brush_dynamics()
      - gimp_context_set_emulate_brush_dynamics()
      - gimp_procedure_config_get_color_array()
      - gimp_procedure_config_set_color_array()
      - gimp_procedure_config_get_core_object_array()
      - gimp_procedure_config_set_core_object_array()
    * Renamed functions:
      - gimp_path_export_to_file() to gimp_image_export_path_to_file()
      - gimp_path_export_to_string() to gimp_image_export_path_to_string()
      - gimp_path_import_from_file() to gimp_image_import_paths_from_file()
      - gimp_path_import_from_string() to gimp_image_import_paths_from_string()
      - gimp_palette_entry_get_color() to gimp_palette_get_entry_color()
      - gimp_palette_entry_get_name() to gimp_palette_get_entry_name()
      - gimp_palette_entry_set_color() to gimp_palette_set_entry_color()
      - gimp_palette_entry_set_name() to gimp_palette_set_entry_name()
      - gimp_plug_in_extension_enable() to gimp_plug_in_persistent_enable()
      - gimp_plug_in_extension_process() to gimp_plug_in_persistent_process()
      - gimp_procedure_extension_ready() to gimp_procedure_persistent_ready()
      - gimp_buffers_get_list() to gimp_buffers_get_name_list()
      - gimp_context_get_dynamics() to gimp_context_get_dynamics_name()
      - gimp_context_set_dynamics() to gimp_context_set_dynamics_name()
      - gimp_dynamics_get_list() to gimp_dynamics_get_name_list()
    * Removed functions:
      - gimp_image_get_colormap()
      - gimp_image_set_colormap()
      - gimp_image_metadata_load_prepare()
      - gimp_image_metadata_load_finish()
      - gimp_image_metadata_save_finish()
      - gimp_resource_chooser_set_clickable()
      - gimp_resource_chooser_set_drag_target()
      - gimp_resource_select_new()
      - gimp_resource_select_set()
      + gimp_fonts_get_by_name()
    * GimpResource:
      - The ParamSpec arguments (including every subtype) may now have a
        default value.
      - The ParamSpec arguments now have a default_to_context parameter,
        which overrides any default value with a dynamic one
        (context-dependant).
    * GimpBrushSelect now chooses only a brush (no more widgets to
      select a spacing, opacity or paint mode).
    * All arrays of items, drawables, layers, channels, paths, resources
      (and each specific subtypes of resources) and images as argument
      in a libgimp function were now changed to NULL-terminated arrays.
    * GimpRunImageFunc (the run() signature for GimpImageProcedure)
      doesn't have a n_drawables argument anymore. The drawables
      argument is simply NULL-terminated, consistently to other changes
      in PDB.
    * Various functions now return arrays of GeglColor or arrays of
      specific resource types when relevant.
  - Changes in libgimpwidgets:
    * GimpColorArea: dropped colors are now passed as GeglColor.
    * New functions:
      - gimp_prop_choice_radio_frame_new()
      - gimp_int_radio_frame_set_title()
      - gimp_widget_animation_enabled()
    * Updated functions:
      - gimp_help_connect() has a new `tooltip` argument as a proper
        advanced version of gimp_help_set_help_data().
    * GimpFileEntry was made private because it is still used internally
      but the whole API was deprecated since 2006.
  - Changes in libgimpbase:
    * GimpRGB and GimpRGB arrays are not supported anymore in the PDB and GIMP
      Protocol (only GeglColor and GimpColorArray).
    * GimpUnit:
      - now a proper class instead of a weird int type extending an enum
        type of the same name. This also makes unit parameters actually
        introspectable.
      - concepts of singular/plural removed from this class because it
        just doesn't work out with proper internationalization.
    * New functions:
      - gimp_int32_array_get_values()
      - gimp_int32_array_set_values()
      - gimp_float_array_get_values()
      - gimp_float_array_set_values()
      - gimp_value_array_get_core_object_array()
    * Removed functions:
      - gimp_unit_get_singular()
      - gimp_unit_get_plural()
      - gimp_env_init()
      - gimp_cpu_accel_set_use()
      - gimp_signal_private()
    * Renamed functions:
      - gimp_unit_get_identifier() to gimp_unit_get_name()
      - gimp_float_array_get_values() to gimp_double_array_get_values()
      - gimp_float_array_set_values() to gimp_double_array_set_values()
      - gimp_param_float_array_get_type() to gimp_param_double_array_get_type()
      - gimp_param_spec_float_array() to gimp_param_spec_double_array()
      - gimp_value_dup_float_array() to gimp_value_dup_double_array()
      - gimp_value_get_float_array() to gimp_value_get_double_array()
      - gimp_value_set_float_array() to gimp_value_set_double_array()
      - gimp_value_set_static_float_array() to gimp_value_set_static_double_array()
      - gimp_value_take_float_array() to gimp_value_take_double_array()
    * New argument flag GIMP_PARAM_DONT_SERIALIZE.
    * New type GimpParamSpecObject, which is basically a
      GParamSpecObject with a default value. It is now used as parent
      type for GimpParamSpecColor, GimpParamSpecUnit and all
      GimpParamSpecResource subtypes.
    * GIMP_PDB_PROC_TYPE_EXTENSION renamed GIMP_PDB_PROC_TYPE_PERSISTENT.
    * GimpCoreObjectArray: new alias to NULL-terminated core objects,
      such as images, items, etc. The main reason is to make it a boxed
      type for proper handling as object properties and PDB argument.
    * GimpObjectArray was removed.
    * Deprecated GIMP_PRECISION_*_GAMMA enum values have been removed.
  - Changes in libgimpcolor:
    * All gimp_rgb_parse_*() functions now become gimp_color_parse_*() functions
      (GeglColor based rather than GimpRGB).
    * GimpRGB, GimpCMYK, GimpHSV, GimpHSL type and all usage was
      removed. Related API were deleted too.
    * GIMP_RGB_LUMINANCE* macros were made private. They are still used
      internally by some core plug-ins but are not exposed anymore as
      official API.
  - Changes in libgimpconfig:
    * Removed functions:
      - gimp_config_serialize_strv()
      - gimp_config_deserialize_strv()
    * Renamed functions:
      - gimp_scanner_parse_float() to gimp_scanner_parse_double()
  - PDB:
    * Triple-backtick blocks in PDB-generated functions' descriptions is
      now recognized so that pre-formatted code is kept as-is. E.g.
      indentation is not broken anymore in code samples on the gi-docgen
      API documentation.
    * New "format" PDB type to pass Babl format arguments.
    * Most compat PDB procedures were removed, except the few ones we
      still use in some of our core plug-ins or scripts.
    * All int32 and float arrays are now passed through the PDB without
      requiring a size argument preceding it.

Translations:

  - New Bengali language support.

Build:

  - Minimum dependency version bumps:
    * babl 0.1.110
    * GEGL 0.4.50
    * harfbuzz 2.8.2
  - Started a skeleton for unit testing framework for libgimp (only a few tests
    so far but we eventually target exhaustivity).
  - CI:
    * Main CI jobs are now compiled with Clang, as well as Windows installer,
      MSIX and Flatpak. Some benchmarks run by Øyvind show we can gain a bit
      of performance in some situations in babl/GEGL/ctx codepaths, thanks to
      better auto-vectorization support.
    * x86 (32-bit) cross-build job for Windows removed.
    * "packaging" stage merged back with "build" stage.
    * "gimp-debian-x64" job now also generates an AppImage for every commit.
    * LLD linker now used in all build jobs (except scheduled GCC and legacy
      32-bit Windows jobs).
    * Windows cross-builds are not triggered anymore until after GIMP
      3.0 (when we'll handle the issues).
    * Lua-related files are not shipped anymore with any of the official
      builds.
  - New gimp-data repository used as a git submodule:
    * Various data were moved to gimp-data: icons, cursors, patterns, brushes
      and application icon/logo.
    * Various files are generated from the source logo: wilber.ico (for Windows
      installer), gimp.icns (macOS), desktop application icons for Unix-like
      systems, Wilber icons of the "Default" icon theme within the application.
    * Splash image and Windows installer's BMP images are generated from the
      splash image contributed as XCF.
  - Support for .pdb debug symbol files (Visual Studio) was added for
    Windows.
  - Windows installer: new option to launch GIMP after install.
  - Nightly flatpak: HEIC support is now an extension as in our beta
    flatpak.
  - macOS minimal support was bumped to version 11.
  - Python plug-ins are made mandatory, not optional anymore.
  - Our flatpak-s will now use $XDG_CONFIG_HOME config folder
    unconditionally (not the `~/.var` folder). It won't depend anymore
    on whether this config folder already existed or not.
  - Only Lua 5.1 and luajit are supported. Later versions have
    incompatibilities breaking Lua plug-ins. The detection of the lua
    version (by parsing `lua -v output` if needed) is also improved.
  - List of languages is now pre-parsed during build, which accelerates
    startup a bit (especially on Windows).
  - Better error messaging of the configure step when gimp-data
    submodule was not initialized or when it is out-of-sync.
  - Improved AppStream metadata file validation taking care of the case
    when the release date is not yet known.
  - The last of deprecated gdk_pointer_grab() calls are now removed.
  - Build made more portables for non-GLibc or non-GNU coreutils
    environments.
  - enable-default-bin meson option now also installs a symlink for a
    gimp-3 binary (additionally to default gimp-3.0 and gimp symlink),
    or a renamed copy on Windows.
  - Installer for Windows will use the new gimp-3.exe binary so that it
    can properly register a registry entry based on the major version
    only.


Overview of Changes from GIMP 2.99.16 to GIMP 2.99.18
=====================================================

Core:

  - New snapping options:
    * "Snap to Bounding Boxes": allows on-canvas snapping to either layer
      borders or center.
    * "Snap to Equidistance": allows to snap a layer to be at the same distance
      from a second one that this second one is to a third one, either
      horizontally or vertically.
  - GIMP is now able to use fonts with custom styles, which Pango is unable to
    work with.
  - Font names are not unique anymore, which means that GIMP doesn't rename
    identically named fonts with #1 or #2, etc. as it used to do. These fonts
    with same name are now properly working despite the name clash.
  - GimpData now have a concept of collection, which is either a controlled name
    for internal data, or a string constructed from the local file path for
    external data. This will be used to serialize data objects hence easily
    retrieve the proper data even when some data may have duplicate names.
  - New palette import support: SwatchBooker.
  - Artificially set PANGOCAIRO_BACKEND=fc when running on Windows to use the
    fontconfig backend, which enables anti-aliasing on Windows, unlike the
    default pangocairo backend.
  - XCF:
    * Font information are more accurately stored (not only the font name, but
      also storing various other attributes and even a file hash in the ideal
      case where the exact same font file is available), allowing to find the
      right font (if installed) on load with less errors.
    * As a consequence of the previous point, new files with text layers will be
      saved as a bumped XCF 19 version.
    * Older XCF versions with text layers can still be saved using older XCF
      versions as long as the text layers are untouched in an edit session.
  - "view-zoom-*" actions are not radio actions anymore.
  - Improve thumbnail loading algorithm:
    1. If there is a GimpThumbnailProcedure, it is run first.
    2. Otherwise we check if a thumbnail is in the metadata.
    3. As last resort, we just load the full image.
  - Generic inter-process transient window reimplemented using opaque GBytes
    window identifiers instead of guint32. The goal is to have windows created
    by plug-ins be transient to the calling core image window, but also the
    other way around: some core dialogs are generated through PDB calls (in
    particular resource and drawable chooser dialogs created by gimp_*_popup()
    functions) and should be transient to plug-in dialogs.
    This works on X11 and Wayland (the Wayland implementation is new, previous
    code was X11-only). It should work on Windows too (code exists) but this was
    left disabled as it leads to core process hanging (as described in
    https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=359538) and is pending debugging.
    There is no macOS implementation yet, and it seems to be missing from GDK as
    well.
  - Indexed images' colormap:
    * Now possible to delete colors if unused.
  - Updates for floating data's actions:
    * New actions "edit-paste-float" and "edit-paste-float-in-place" for pasting
      the contents of the clipboard as floating data with default positioning
      algorithm or in-place respectively;
    * renames "select-float" to "select-cut-float" which does a cut and paste as
      float in one action;
    * adds "select-copy-float" which does a copy and paste as float in one
      action;
    * reorganize a bit the `Edit > Paste as` submenu with sections for the
      floating data variants;
    * add a "Float" submenu in "Select" root menu, containing the 2 variant
      actions "select-cut-float" and "select-copy-float".
  - GEGL operation filters are now non-destructive by default: running these
    filters create layer effects. The UI is still basic and will be improved
    through iterations after GIMP 3 release.
  - FG/BG color action code (e.g. "Increase the red channel") are made
    contextual, relatively to the active image, working relatively to the
    correct color space and TRC.
  - Device Status dockable shows context-sensitive colors (the color profile's
    name is displayed as tooltip when hovering a fg/bg color status).
  - Palettes are now GeglColor-based and are stored with a lot more precision.
    Older low-precision palettes are still loaded fine. A single palette can
    contain mixed formats (different models and space). A concept of format
    restriction was added, yet is currently only used for indexed images'
    palettes (whose colors are always and only in the image's format).
  - Color History is now space-invaded (colors are stored in their original
    format and space).
  - Various color selectors (core or modules) are now space-invaded when
    relevant. For instance, they show colors in the active image space (not just
    sRGB) and display the profile's name when relevant. Also when simulation is
    active, some of the color selectors will update their out-of-gamut zone, not
    only to be within the image's gamut, but also the soft-proof gamut.

Graphical User Interface:

  - "Merge menu and title bar" option is not shown on macOS as it is not usable
    there (the main menu is anyway out of the window from the start).
  - Top menu has been special-cased for macOS (some items are removed with
    "hidden-when" attribute set to "macos-menubar" value) for items which are
    also available in the application menu.
  - Menu section can now be named with the "section-name" attribute in
    GtkBuilder ".ui" files. This can be used as a replacement of the former
    "Placeholder" concept which we used to have (and has now been completely
    removed).
    Plug-ins or GEGL operations which want to make use of sections can use the
    "[Section]" syntax. For instance installing a plug-in in the menu path
    "<Image>/File/[Open]" will install the menu item at the end of the Open
    section (i.e. after the various other open-file actions at the top of the
    File menu).
  - Some string or naming consistencies were fixed in source strings.
  - GimpContainerEntry don't have inline completion anymore. Instead the result
    pop-up always appear, even for one result. This is because a limitation of
    GtkEntryCompletion: we cannot remove the case sensitivity search (see
    gtk#275) which was very bad usage experience because when we reached a
    single result, suddenly nothing happened anymore (no popup, no completion)
    if case was different on any letter. It's just better to always have popup
    with case insensitivity.
    This widget is used for instance for on-canvas font selection.
  - Some icons were modified with an added light border to make them better
    visible on dark themes: gimp-tool-text icons in Color and Legacy icon themes
    and gimp-tool-dodge in Color theme.
  - Help menu rearranged to be better organized and also to move "About GIMP" as
    the last item, which is its more conventional position.
  - Many fixes to the default themes (including several cases of CSS rules
    leaking from system themes).
  - New settings in Preferences to set the interface base font size (this won't
    work as well, or at all, for themes which would set absolute font sizes).
  - "gimp-wilber-eek" icon is now reused as generic "image-missing" icon too.
  - In dockables' grid view, the hovered icon is now highlighted with a
    contrasted border.
  - GimpPdbDialog (e.g. resource chooser dialogs) are now set to system defaults
    for whether or not they use a header bar.
  - Shift+Number-row default shortcuts are now transformed into the actual key
    in the currently used layout (reciprocally, if numbers are direct access
    key, their counterpart shortcuts are similarly updated).
  - Colormap dockable:
    * New "Delete" button available and sensitive only when selecting an unused
      color in the palette.
  - Windows: title bar will be switched to light or dark mode based on the
    current theme.
  - The quit dialog now adjusts its size relatively to monitor height.
  - The heuristic to set a cursor when single or multi-selecting items in a tree
    view got reviewed in order to avoid unnecessary scroll. As a general rule,
    the cursor is always set to one of the selected elements, ideally the last
    clicked element unless it is not selected (e.g. removed with Ctrl-click),
    then a closest selected element is chosen to avoid unnecessarily scroll of
    the item list.
  - Pad buttons can now be configured in the "Input Devices" configuration dialog
    to run any actions directly (without mapping shortcut key combinations as
    intermediate). This only works on Wayland for the time being (yet may work on
    more platforms in the future, depending on GTK evolution).
  - Themes can now be proposed with up to 3 variants: dark, light and middle
    gray, through gimp-dark.css, gimp-light.css and gimp-gray.css CSS files
    respectively.
  - As a consequence of the previous point, our Default and Gray themes are
    merged as one with 3 possible variants.
  - Our Color and Symbolic icon themes are merged as a single icon theme named
    "Default".
  - The "prefer-symbolic-icons" property which can be set in Preferences is only
    used when the selected icon theme has both Color and Symbolic styles.
    Otherwise the chosen icon theme style prevails. The presence of a style is
    determined by the presence of the "gimp-wilber" icon (which becomes
    therefore a de-facto mandatory icon in an icon theme) and/or its symbolic
    variant.
  - When "Override icon sizes" is checked, a few padding values are also
    overridden by code in the loaded CSS.
  - As a consequence of the previous point, we removed the "Compact" theme which
    is now simply possible by overriding sizes to "Small" in Preferences (when
    the theme is "Default", it will display the same as the former "Compact"
    theme, though it will also work with any other theme).
  - "Darker" theme is removed for lack of contributors actually caring for it.
    It could be revived in the future as a "Contrast" theme with both a dark and
    light variants at the very least.
  - The search function in Layers dockable was moved over the Layers list (with
    headers), the "link" icon replaced by "search" icon, and is now available
    for both Layers, Channels and Vectors dockables (though unsaved for Vectors
    because of lack in XCF support).
  - The Welcome dialog was improved and its cases extended:
    * A new "Personalize" tab contains duplicate settings taken from the
      Preferences, in particular the more controversial settings, such as theme
      or icon themes, HiPPI support (icon/font sizing), merged menu and title
      bar, tool groups or update check.
    * A new "Contribute" tab displays a few of the main links for people to
      contribute to GIMP.
    * A new "Create" tab proposes buttons to create new images or open existing
      ones, as well as displaying a list of the last 8 opened images for easy
      re-opening.
    * A new checkbox (checked by default) allows the welcome dialog to be shown
      at each and every startup. Except on new installations or version updates,
      the first shown tab will be the new "Create" tab, which is probably the
      most useful for day-to-day first dialog shown at startup (on updates, the
      "Welcome" tab featuring the new splash screen and a small welcome text is
      shown).

Tools:

  - Text tool:
    * improve markup creation logic when replacing selected text in
      order not to create useless styling markup interfering with other
      features.
    * Alignment for RTL languages is now more consistent with how it works in
      other software (such as LibreOffice or Scribus).
    * Text layers can now be rendered in the full image's gamut (not sRGB only
      anymore), though colors are trimmed to the gamut and are always 8-bit.
    * Text outline colors are now rendered in float in the full image's gamut,
      without precision loss.
  - Paint tools: all painting tools now have an "Expand Layers" option
    allowing to auto-expand layers when painting across layer
    boundaries. A few additional sub-options customize how this
    expansion happens (by how many pixels, filling with transparency,
    color, pattern).
    Expansion does not grow over canvas boundaries, unless "Show All" is
    checked too.
  - Color Picker:
    * Picked color is internally kept as a GeglColor, doing only last-minute
      conversion to the output model/space, hence with better precision.
    * RGB, Grayscale and Pixel modes display the profile name of the output
      color space (the active image's color space if relevant).
  - The Gradient tool now uses GeglColor internally, though GIMP's gradient
    format (GGR) still uses old RGB format.

Plug-ins:

  - Farbfeld: new image format import/export support.
  - OpenEXR:
    * Files with single channels are always treated as grayscale, even when
      they use non-conventional channel names. A notice message is also
      presented to the user in a dialog for information.
  - Metadata Editor:
    * Various code cleanups and improvements;
    * GUI improvements;
    * Xmp.plus.ImageSupplierName can now only have one value;
    * Improved Creation date handling;
    * Synchronization (both for reading and writing) added between some Exif,
      Xmp and Iptc equivalent tags. On reading, when equivalent tags have
      different values at load, a terminal warning is now outputted.
  - Script-fu:
    * Generated dialog's titles are not prefixed with "Script-Fu: " anymore.
    * Several scripts were removed and moved to gimp-data-extras: erase-rows,
      grid-system, select-to-brush, select-to-image, select-to-pattern.
    * script-fu-copy-visible was removed (and not moved to gimp-data-extras).
    * New test scripts.
  - New gimp-help-main script to link to the "Table of Contents" of the manual,
    added to the "Help > User Manual" submenu.
  - PSP:
    * added support to load PSP ICC Profile data.
    * fixed vulnerabilities: ZDI-CAN-22096, ZDI-CAN-22097.
    * load active selection from PSP file.
    * Load guides and grid info.
  - Image Map: two new fields to the HTML Link tab and one new field to the
    Javascript tab for area properties:
    * accesskey: The same as the mnemonic key shortcuts in GTK, to activate an
      area of the image map. Depending on the OS, you either hold ALT or
      ALT+SHIFT and this key.
    * tabindex: What order to select the area when the user presses Tab.
    * onClick: Run a Javascript function when the user clicks on the area.
  - Esm Software PIX: new import support.
  - All plug-ins were ported to the new Gimp*Procedure API using
    GimpProcedureConfig instead of GimpValueArray arguments.
  - Add Border (script-fu): add a 'Allow resizing' toggle.
  - Plug-ins ported to GimpProcedureDialog: van-gogh-lic, dds-write, flame,
    histogram-export, lighting, fractal-explorer, map-object, sample-colorize,
    compose, curve-bend, depth-merge, selection-to-path, pagecurl, file-cel,
    file-svg, file-wmf, smooth-palette, small-tile, film, gradient-flare, tile,
    web-page, screenshot.
  - JPEG-XL:
    * Load metadata via libjxl exclusively.
    * Disable GIMP EXIF orientation support, using orientation stored in
      codestream instead.
  - HEIF:
    * Load metadata via libheif exclusively.
    * Disable GIMP EXIF orientation support.
  - PDF:
    * "Layers as Pages" works now for a single layer group with multiple
      sub-layers.
  - DDS:
    * Add support for loading DDS 16- and 32-bit per channel RGBA. Loading is
      supported for 16-bit half float, 32-bit float, 16 and 32-bit unsigned and
      signed int.
      This supports both the DX10 formats and the D3D FOURCC versions.
      16- and 32-bit per channel images with less than 4 channels are not yet
      supported.
    * Add DDS support for loading R8G8, R16 and R16G16 formats.
      GIMP can load DXGI variants as well as the older D3DF versions, including
      handling of the signed versions.
      We also set signed when the pixelformat flag DDPF_BUMPDUDV is set.
    * New option to vertically flip dds image on import. This is needed by some
      game engines.
    * All mipmap generation is done at 32-bit floating-point precision.
    * A new cubic filter has also been added (Catmull-Rom) which
      rounds-out the existing lineup of cubic filters.
    * Better handling of DX10+ files in ddsread.
    * Always interpret BC1 cutout pixels as black pixels with 0 alpha,
      per the official format specification.
    * Import code was rewritten and improved for maintainability and
      readability. Importer now supports nearly all non-video
      uncompressed formats.
  - GIF:
    * Remember when a file was stored as a GIF animation to be reused when
      overwriting.
   - PNG:
    * Import/export safe-to-copy PNG chunks.
   - HEJ2: new import support. HEJ2 is JPEG 2000 image coded images in HEIF
     containers.
   - PSD: better wording of the export warning for the path of less surprise.
   - Python Console uses theme colors for font colors instead of hardcoded
     colors which don't work well on darker themes.

Data:

  - Clarified our capitalization rule for data titles: part of titles
    inside parentheses also follow title casing.
  - "(Hardedge)" generated gradients got renamed "(Hard Edge)".

Translations:

  - Many non-translatable strings were made translatable. Various other
    localization bugs were handled.
  - New Belarusian translation in the Windows installer.

API:

  - Changes in libgimpconfig:
    * GimpConfig serialization doesn't break anymore if one property
      serialization fails. GIMP will now continue to serialize the rest. In
      particular, it will allow to retrieve as many arguments as possible
      between plug-in runs.
    * GBytes (de)serialization support added. It supports gracefully a NULL
      GBytes value.
    * GeglColor (de)serialization support added. Former GimpRGB properties can
      be gracefully converted to GeglColor properties when needed (e.g. to be
      able to convert old property or resource files, containing GimpRGB values,
      to newer GeglColor).
  - Changes in libgimp:
    * GimpResource can now be (de)serialized using the data name and collection
      so that we are now able to retrieve a used resource quite reliably between
      runs.
    * For GimpProcedure with no run-mode parameter, the run-mode is considered
      non-interactive (e.g. for decision algorithm about whether to reuse
      previous settings or not).
    * Arguments of type GimpResource and its subtypes are now supported and
      GimpProcedureDialog will generate appropriate chooser widgets.
    * Arguments of type GimpLayer and GimpChannel will have a proper widget
      generated (GimpDrawableChooser) by GimpProcedureDialog, limited to only
      the proper drawable subtype.
    * All GimpProcedure and its subtypes now have a run() method using a
      GimpConfig instead of a GimpValueArray. In particular, the type of the run
      argument changed in gimp_procedure_new(), gimp_batch_procedure_new(),
      gimp_image_procedure_new(), gimp_load_procedure_new(),
      gimp_save_procedure_new() and gimp_thumbnail_procedure_new().
      The following 2 run function types had further evolutions:
      + GimpRunLoadFunc: by default, a GimpLoadProcedure will try and load
        metadata from a file (if Exiv2 knows the format). The run() function
        will be allowed to edit the GimpMetadata object but also the load flags
        before it is actually attached to the image, allowing plug-ins to have
        custom metadata handling code when needed.
      + GimpRunSaveFunc: metadata handling is integrated in this new version of
        the API, since the run() function will pass a prepared metadata object,
        which can be modified by plug-in code (if needed). This GimpMetadata
        object will be stored automatically by the GimpSaveProcedure
        infrastructure if the mimetype argument is set in
        gimp_save_procedure_new().
    * On plug-in exit, we do not display memory reference hold warnings for Lua,
      Javascript and Python plug-ins anymore. The GObject-Introspection bindings
      for these languages seem to hold references of their own in some
      conditions and anyway plug-in developers don't have any memory management
      capabilities available in the chosen languages. It's not like they can do
      anything.
    * New functions:
      + gimp_procedure_dialog_set_sensitive_if_in()
      + gimp_procedure_dialog_set_ok_label()
      + gimp_procedure_dialog_fill_notebook()
      + gimp_procedure_dialog_fill_notebook_list()
      + gimp_procedure_dialog_fill_paned()
      + gimp_procedure_config_get_choice_id()
      + gimp_prop_brush_chooser_new()
      + gimp_prop_font_chooser_new()
      + gimp_prop_gradient_chooser_new()
      + gimp_prop_palette_chooser_new()
      + gimp_prop_pattern_chooser_new()
      + gimp_resource_select_button_get_label()
      + gimp_pattern_get_buffer()
      + gimp_drawables_close_popup()
      + gimp_drawables_popup()
      + gimp_drawables_set_popup()
      + gimp_prop_drawable_chooser_new()
      + gimp_font_get_pango_font_description()
      + gimp_fonts_get_by_name()
      + gimp_image_get_palette()
      + gimp_procedure_run_config()
      + gimp_procedure_run_valist()
      + gimp_procedure_dialog_get_drawable_preview()
    * Removed functions:
      + gimp_procedure_config_begin_run()
      + gimp_procedure_config_end_run()
      + gimp_procedure_config_begin_export()
      + gimp_procedure_config_end_export()
      + gimp_procedure_config_get_values()
      + gimp_procedure_config_set_values()
      + gimp_pdb_run_procedure_argv()
      + gimp_pdb_run_procedure()
      + gimp_pdb_run_procedure_valist()
      + gimp_pdb_run_procedure_array()
      + gimp_pdb_run_procedure_config()
      + gimp_procedure_new_arguments()
      + gimp_pdb_set_data() a.k.a. gimp_set_data()
      + gimp_pdb_get_data() a.k.a. gimp_get_data()
      + gimp_pdb_get_data_size() a.k.a. gimp_get_data_size()
    * Modified functions:
      + gimp_procedure_dialog_get_label():
        1. Added `is_markup` and `with_mnemonic` boolean arguments.
        2. `label_id` argument can be a string property to sync to, or a new
           widget ID to create, using `text` as initialization contents.
      + gimp_label_spin_set_increments(): made more generic and robust to handle
        integer spin or modifiable min/max.
      + gimp_param_spec_get_desc():
        - Also handles new GimpChoice arguments by listing all valid string
          values for a given argument.
        - Returned string is now pango-markup formatted.
      + gimp_display_get_window_handle() and gimp_progress_get_window_handle():
        the return value is now an opaque GBytes which is to be interpreted
        differently depending on the running platform.
      + All gimp_*_popup() functions now have a `parent_window` argument which
        is the opaque window handle of the calling plug-in dialog, such as can
        be returned by gimp_dialog_get_native_handle().
      + gimp_brush_get_pixels() replaced by gimp_brush_get_buffer() and
        gimp_brush_get_mask().
      + gimp_text_layer_set_font() now uses a GimpFont.
      + gimp_text_layer_get_font() now returns a GimpFont.
      + gimp_text_layer_new() now uses a GimpFont.
      + gimp_text_fontname() renamed gimp_text_font().
      + gimp_text_get_extents_fontname() renamed gimp_text_get_extents_font().
      + gimp_ui_init() now implies a gegl_init().
      + gimp_procedure_run() now uses a variable argument list of (name, value)
        pairs.
    * New classes:
      + GimpPickableSelect
      + GimpDrawableChooser
    * Modified classes or structure:
      + GimpProgress:
        - GimpProgressVtableGetWindowFunc function type now returns GBytes.
        - get_window() abstract method is renamed get_window_handle().
      + GimpResourceSelectButton:
        - Class made abstract.
        - It now has a label which is used in the size group in
          GimpProcedureDialog.
      + GimpBrushSelectButton: big UX improvements.
      + GimpPatternSelectButton: big UX improvements.
      + All Gimp*SelectButton widgets were renamed to Gimp*Chooser.
    * New GimpProcedure argument types:
      + GimpChoice: this will replace cases when we used to use int arguments to
        represent custom enum types, which was particularly non-usable when the
        list of valid choices was long and the string docs was not kept
        up-to-date.
        It comes with GIMP_PROC_ARG_CHOICE(), GIMP_PROC_AUX_ARG_CHOICE(),
        GIMP_PROC_VAL_CHOICE(), GIMP_VALUES_GET_CHOICE() and
        GIMP_VALUES_SET_CHOICE() macros.
        The advantages of this new type:
        - No need to keep the list of valid choices up-to-date anymore within
          the docs string.
        - Since the docs string doesn't contain long list of arguments, we don't
          have long opaque and non-understandable tooltips assigned to graphical
          interface widgets.
        - Calling a PDB procedure with a human-readable string is much more
          understandable than with an opaque int.
        - This type handles invalid input for generic error handling.
        - We can easily generate a list of the valid string values. E.g. this is
          now used in the Procedure Browser through gimp_param_spec_get_desc().
        - Choices can be made insensitive if needed.
        - A proper widget (GimpStringComboBox) will be generated by
          GimpProcedureDialog by default.
    * PDB: the big change in the PDB is that we decided not to warrant argument
      orders anymore. In particular, it means that the libgimp functions to run
      PDB procedures are not based on an ordered array of arguments anymore but
      on named arguments only.
      + The first consequence is that it will be possible to add arguments, and
        even order them however we want in the list of arguments. For
        backward-compatibility, what will matter is only that the procedure
        using the default values for the new arguments will behave the same way
        it did when it used not to have said arguments. Then scripts won't break
        as we add new arguments and we won't have to create alternative v2 or v3
        PDB procedures each time we wish to add a new feature.
      + The second consequence is that calling PDB procedures is now much more
        semantic. Firstly we can ignore arguments for which we keep the default
        values; secondly every argument will be accompanied by a name instead of
        being a long list of int or boolean values.
        Typically while we used to call a PDB like this:
```C
        gimp_pdb_run_procedure (gimp_get_pdb (),
                                "file-png-save",
                                GIMP_TYPE_RUN_MODE,     GIMP_RUN_NONINTERACTIVE,
                                GIMP_TYPE_IMAGE,        image,
                                G_TYPE_INT,             1,
                                GIMP_TYPE_OBJECT_ARRAY, args,
                                G_TYPE_FILE,            file,
                                G_TYPE_BOOLEAN,         FALSE,
                                G_TYPE_INT,             9,
                                G_TYPE_BOOLEAN,         FALSE,
                                G_TYPE_BOOLEAN,         FALSE,
                                G_TYPE_BOOLEAN,         FALSE,
                                G_TYPE_BOOLEAN,         FALSE,
                                G_TYPE_BOOLEAN,         FALSE,
                                G_TYPE_BOOLEAN,         FALSE,
                                G_TYPE_NONE);
```
        We can now call it like this (with a shorter list of arguments, ignoring
        all the ones which we keep default, not bothering about arg order and
        tagging each arg with a semantic name):
```C
        gimp_procedure_run (gimp_pdb_lookup_procedure (gimp_get_pdb (),
                                                       "file-png-save"),
                            "run-mode",         GIMP_RUN_NONINTERACTIVE,
                            "image",            image,
                            "num-drawables",    1,
                            "drawables",        drawables,
                            "file",             file,
                            "bkgd",             FALSE,
                            "phys",             FALSE,
                            "time",             FALSE,
                            NULL);
```
      + The few libgimp functions of the form `gimp_pdb_run_procedure*()` were
        removed and moved directly to `gimp_procedure_run*()` variant. The
        presence of both interfaces was making it confusing.
      + For bindings not able to replicate variable arguments functions, the
        bindable function will be gimp_procedure_run_config() only, which will
        be renamed to gimp_procedure_run() in bindings.
      + Note that internally the argument order is still relevant for any system
        which interfaces directly with the PDB instead of libgimp. In other
        words, it is still relevant for script-fu which generates functions out
        of PDB procedures directly (not libgimp).
      + GimpObjectArray arguments now allow NULL through the pipe as meaning an
        empty array.
  - Changes in libgimpbase:
    * New classes:
      + GimpChoice: meant to represent a list of allowed strings values.
    * GimpRotationType values were changed by prepending "DEGREES" without
      hyphen before the numeric value (e.g.: GIMP_ROTATE_90 becomes
      GIMP_ROTATE_DEGREES90), because the older naming breaks introspection for
      some languages, such as Python where Gimp.RotationType.90 syntax would be
      forbidden.
    * GIMP Protocol can now exchange GeglColor values across the wire.
  - Changes in libgimpwidgets:
    * New functions:
      + gimp_widget_set_native_handle()
      + gimp_dialog_get_native_handle()
      + gimp_preview_area_reset()
      + gimp_cairo_set_source_color()
      + gimp_color_selection_set_format()
    * New classes:
      + GimpLabelStringWidget: makes any widget with a "value" string property
        into a GimpLabeled.
    * Modified classes:
      + GimpStringComboBox:
        - add a "value" string property to GimpStringComboBox (which makes it
          usable by GimpLabelStringWidget).
        - New method gimp_string_combo_box_set_sensitivity()
    * Several widgets are now space-invaded, using GeglColor instead of GimpRGB:
      + GimpColorArea
      + GimpColorScale
      + GimpColorScales
      + GimpColorSelect
      + GimpLabelColor
      + GimpPreviewArea
      + GimpColorButton
      + GimpColorHexEntry
      + GimpColorSelection
      + GimpColorNotebook
      + GimpColorSelect
      + GimpColorSelector
      + GimpColorNotebook
  - Changes in libgimpui:
    * Modified functions:
      + gimp_window_set_transient_for_display() and gimp_window_set_transient()
        now use an internal implementation similar to core
        gimp_window_set_transient_for(), with the same improvements (works even
        at construction when the window is not visible yet + works for Wayland
        too).
    * Removed functions:
      - gimp_ui_get_progress_window()
      - gimp_ui_get_display_window()
  - Changes in libgimpcolor:
    * New functions:
      + gimp_color_set_alpha()
      + gimp_color_is_perceptually_identical()
      + gimp_color_is_out_of_gamut()
      + gimp_color_is_out_of_self_gamut()
      + gimp_color_parse_hex()
      + gimp_color_parse_name()

Build:

  - Windows 10 becomes the new minimal support for the 3.0 stable series on
    Windows. This bump happens because of end-of-support by Microsoft itself,
    and also by MSYS2 project which is our base for the official installers.
  - CI now generates babl and GEGL API reference HTML as artifact tarballs.
  - New meson options -Dfits and -Dopenmp to enable/disable respectively FITS or
    OpenMP support more explicitly (allowing to bypass auto-detection).
  - Pango 1.50 or higher is now required as a result of using
    pango_attribute_as_font_desc(). Also pango, pangocairo and pangoft2 now use
    the same minimum version requirement.
  - New Aarch64/Windows build jobs in CI.
  - The universal Windows installer generated by the CI now detects and installs
    a native Aarch64 build on ARM 64-bit architecture.
  - Meson: alternatively to luajit, we now search also lua5.1, then 5.2 and 5.3
    (5.1 first, because apart luajit, it is the only one with lua-lgi support in
    MSYS2 right now).
  - CI: unify jobs naming and order.
  - Windows builds: various cleanups, code factorization and more.
  - Windows installer: the desktop shortcut option is now checked by default
    because of the fact too many people could not find GIMP after installation.
  - New .vscode/ config folder for Visual Studio Code settings to follow our
    coding style.
  - 'gegl.exe' binary is now installed by the Windows installer.
  - Minimum libheif requirement bumped: libheif >= 1.15.1.
  - GEGL requirement bumped to GEGL 0.4.48.


Overview of Changes from GIMP 2.99.14 to GIMP 2.99.16
=====================================================

Core:

  - "Anchor" tooltip changing depending on whether we are floating over a layer
    or layer mask.
  - GIMP_TIMER_START|END are no-op on release builds.
  - Ctrl-F overridden in our item dockables to trigger our item search popover
    (multi-item selection, ability to use regexp or glob search by enabling these
    in Preferences, etc.) rather than the default GTK selection popup for tree
    views.
  - All code is now multi-item aware (even though it might mean specifically
    forbidding using some features on multiple items).
  - Better support of non-ASCII characters in paths on Windows and other fixes
    for Windows: API un-deprecation, unicode variants of functions…
  - Copy|Cut-Paste code reworked further.
  - Action "Crop to Selection" renamed to "Resize Layers to Selection".
  - Action "Crop to Content" renamed to "Crop Layers to Content".
  - If any opened image (with a display) is dirty, then GIMP will now inhibit the
    log-out event on OSes which support it.
  - Port from GtkAction/GtkUIManager to GAction/GMenu finished.
  - The action search now shows the top menu path for actions when available.
  - Actions can now be attributed multiple shortcuts. The duplicate actions
    ending in `-accel` were removed in favor of multiple shortcuts and a few
    secondary (semantic) shortcuts were added such as `Copy`/`Cut`/`Paste`
    buttons for relevant actions, or `ZoomIn`/`ZoomOut` for canvas zoom,
    `Forward`/`Back` to navigate through image tabs, but also some numpad
    shortcuts like the `/` divide from the numpad for the action search
    (additionally to the base keyboard `/` key).
    It is not possible to attribute several shortcuts from GUI yet.
  - An action is automatically generated for all GEGL operations which would
    normally appear in the GEGL Operation tool. This includes in particular
    third-party GEGL operations which might be user-installed. It makes these
    filters also searchable in the action search, usable in menus and shortcuts
    can be assigned as well.
  - If present, the GEGL key "gimp:menu-label" will be used to set the short
    label of the generated action (short labels are typically used in menus since
    the menu path can serve as context). Otherwise the "title" with appended
    "..." is used.
  - GimpAction now have a concept of short vs. long labels, which can be used in
    different places. In particular, in action search, we usually want the long
    label, whereas in menus, we usually want the short label as we have context
    (though the latter can be tweaked by a custom "label-variant" attribute in
    .ui files).
  - New "Middle Gray (CIELAB)" fill option (new image or new layer).
  - Stroke Selection: "Line" and "Paint tool" styles are now in a stack
    switcher instead of radio buttons. More advanced options are not "hidden"
    anymore in a foldable widget.
  - New grayscale color picking mode.
  - .aco palettes are now imported with babl. As a result, it is now possible to
    import CIE Lab palettes (colorspace 7)
  - Action search now displays a "help" icon which can be clicked to show the
    currently selected action's manual page (or the action search manual page if
    no actions are selected). Alternatively the F1 shortcut will do the same.
  - Basic matrix operations code was optimized.
  - Fill/Stroke Path/Selection split the "Solid color" option into a "Foreground
    color" and "Background color".
  - Standardize to "X-bit" wording (e.g. "32-bit floating point" rather "32 bit
    floating point").

Tools:

  - GEGL Operation: auto-activate when enabled.
  - Transform tools and GEGL operation don't auto-activate when opening a new
    image or changing the active image.
  - Align tool: "use extents of layer contents" also applies to the alignment
    reference (not only the target objects).
  - Color picker: pick in the image's RGB space.
  - Text tool: new tool option "Show on-canvas editor" to toggle the visibility
    of the on-canvas dialog.
  - Unified Transform tool: the transform matrix is now selectable in the
    on-canvas dialog (for instance to be easily re-usable in other software).

Graphical User Interface:

  - Default, Compact and Gray themes now display a three-dot handle to paned
    separators to improve accessibility and discoverability of the drag ability.
  - The paned separator width is also increased a bit for accessibility (though
    the Compact theme keeps a smaller separator width).
  - Consistently use "Soft-proofing" wording instead of "Softproofing" or "Soft
    proofing"
  - The "GEGL Operation…" item was moved out of the "Filters > Generic" menu and
    into the "Tools" menu.
  - If present, the GEGL key "gimp:menu-path" will now be used by GIMP to create
    a menu item for an operation in a given menu path.
  - Default theme is less dark and the previous Default theme is renamed
    "Darker".
  - "Default" theme does not use smaller font size (than system theme) anymore;
    but the "Compact" theme now does.
  - New option "Merge menu and title bar" in Preferences > Image Windows: this
    is basically an option to switch to Client Side Decoration for the image
    windows (menu will be inside the title bar). It is OFF by default.

Actions:

  - "tools-rotate-arbitrary" and "tools-rotate-image-arbitrary" are now disabled
    when no image is opened.

Plug-ins:

  - JPEG-XL:
    * Initial support for CMYK/A JPEGXL export: Key and Alpha data is saved in
      extra channels, and the simulation profile is saved as well.
      Per the specification developers, the format does not support 'naive' CMYK
      conversion, so a profile is required for export. The option will be
      disabled if not set.
    * Support libjxl 0.9: some API were removed which would have broken
      the plug-in build. Now it should work both with old and new
      version.
  - Script-fu:
    * Byte support: add a new type 'byte' to be able to handle binary data while
      still retaining the utf8 char and string behavior.
    * Enum values are now generated from GIR.
  - Script-fu console: command history now persists across GIMP sessions.
  - PSD:
    * PSD clipping paths: import and export support.
    * Unsupported features are now listed in a dialog on import.
    * Add compatibility notice on export: some people have noted that legacy
      layer modes have better compatibility when exporting PSDs and reopening
      them in Photoshop.
    * New "file-psd-load-metadata" procedure to be used by other plug-ins in
      order to load Photoshop-format metadata. Some formats in particular allow
      PSD style metadata (e.g. see TIFF and JPEG).
  - TIFF:
    * PSD metadata (both in image or layer level) can now be loaded by calling
      the new "file-psd-load-metadata" PDB procedure.
    * IBM PC Formatted TIFF layers are now supported on import.
  - JPEG:
    * PSD metadata (image level only, e.g. paths) can now be loaded by calling
      the new "file-psd-load-metadata" PDB procedure.
    * Clipping path import added.
    * Option "4:2:2 horizontal (chroma halved)" renamed to "4:2:2 (chroma halved
      horizontally)" and "4:2:2 vertical (chroma halved)" renamed to "4:4:0
      (chroma halved vertically)". Research indicates it to be the most usual
      notation for these options.
  - DDS:
    * OpenMP support enabled when available on the build machine.
  - All Python 3 plug-ins whose Python 2 variants used to have a GUI now also
    have one.
  - Script "Predator" removed.
  - PAM: import and export (formats: GRAYSCALE, GRAYSCALE_ALPHA, RGB, RGB_ALPHA)
    support added. PAM files are essentially PPM files with a different header
    format and alpha/16 bit support.
  - GIF:
    * Load error message handling improved.
    * Keep GIF's full palette on import (sometimes needed for consistency when
      used in a specific pipeline, e.g. a videogame engine with fixed palette).
  - PCX:
    * new radio option "override-palette" to override PCX 1 bit palette.
    * 8bpp with 4 planes in PCX/DC import support added (we were only supporting
      3 planes).
  - QOI: new format support (import and export).
  - Amiga IFF/ILBM: initial support for importing indexed ILBM, Amiga PBM, and
    ACBM images.
  - DCX: new import support (DCX files are containers that store up to 1023 PCX
    files).
  - Plug-ins ported to GAction: animation-play, colormap-remap, ifs-compose,
    gfig, ImageMap.
  - Plug-ins ported to GimpProcedureConfig and GimpProcedureDialog:
    align-layers, hot, wavelet-decompose, file-sunras, file-heif, file-tga,
    file-pat, file-xpm, file-csource, file-jp2-load, file-dds (import),
    file-sgi, file-fli, file-pnm, file-gbr, file-psp, file-aa, bmp-save,
    despeckle, blinds, contrast-retinex, jigsaw, nl-filter, destripe, file-mng,
    file-html-table, file-xbm, file-pdf-load, file-gif-save, file-ps,
    border-average, mail, checkerboard.
  - metadata-viewer and metadata-editor: graphical interfaces are not built from
    GtkBuilder .ui files anymore. These were the last instances of using this
    format (except for our new menus!) for creating full GUIs as we don't want
    to go this way anymore!
  - FITS:
    * Ported to cfitsio library for loading/exporting. This allows us to
      import compressed FITS files (GZIP, HCOMP, PLIO, RICE) in 8/16/32
      bit and float/double precision.
    * As a result of the port, this plug-in is now optional.
  - ILBM: "Hold and Modify" (HAM) mode use control bits to increase the
    palette beyond what's stored in the CMAP chunk. We now check if HAM
    mode is set and then interprets the plane bits accordingly.

API:

  - Changes in libgimpwidgets:
    * New functions:
      + gimp_int_store_new_array(): variant of gimp_int_store_new() which will
        work in bindings.
      + gimp_spin_scale_get_mnemonic_keyval()
    * Improved annotations or usage:
      + gimp_procedure_dialog_get_spin_scale(): factor must be 1.0 for integer
        properties.
  - Changes in libgimp:
    * New classes:
      + GimpResource: with unique int ID, instead of data name. Actual data will
        be one of the following subclasses:
        + GimpBrush
        + GimpFont
        + GimpGradient
        + GimpPalette
        + GimpPattern
    * New functions:
      + gimp_procedure_dialog_fill_scrolled_window()
      + gimp_procedure_dialog_get_size_entry()
    * Improved annotations or usage:
      + set_i18n() method of GimpPlugIn expects a UTF-8 catalog directory.
      + clarify gimp_image_set_file() usage (only for XCF files).
      + gimp_image_add_sample_point()
      + gimp_image_get_sample_point_position()
  - Changes in libgimpbase:
    * New functions:
      + gimp_bind_text_domain()
      + gimp_value_array_copy()
    * Improved annotations or usage:
      + gimp_locale_directory() returns a string in the OS encoding for all but
        Windows (UTF-8), i.e. GLib "filename" encoding.
      + Metadata "Exif.Image.ImageResources" and "Exif.Image.0x935c" are not
        exported anymore. These are specific to Photoshop, and while we cannot
        modify them, they can contain sensitive information (e.g. a thumbnail).
      + Exif.Photo.PixelXDimension and Exif.Photo.PixelYDimension metadata tags
        will now be updated (if they already exist in the image) when resizing
        and exporting.
  - Changes in libgimpconfig:
    GStrv config properties are now properly serialized and deserialized for use
    as plug-ins arguments.
    * New functions:
      + gimp_config_serialize_strv()
      + gimp_config_deserialize_strv()
   - PDB:
     * Remove GimpUint8Array in favor of GBytes.

Build:

  - MacPorts support for macOS added (this is even now the official support as we
    build our new packages with MacPorts).
  - meson: make sure libgimp does not depend on GTK+.
  - GLib requirement bumped to version 2.70 as minimum.
  - Improved C99 compatibility of IPC_RMID check.
  - Windows: port fileicon.ico from gimp-2-10 with additional sizes for clearer
    icons on different resolutions and displays.
  - Improve our build scripts to better handle sanitizer tools.
  - Fix some broken unit tests in the meson build.
  - Meson build options 'lua', 'javascript' and 'python' are now features, and
    not boolean. I.e. use option values 'enabled'/'disabled' (defaulting to
    'auto') instead of true/false.
  - Meson build 'vala-plugins' option was renamed to simply 'vala'.
  - Added dependency to Exiv2 0.27.4.
  - JUnit reports from Meson for the CI build.
  - autotools was fully dropped!
  - Debian 12 bookworm is now our base platform for CI, but also for deciding
    whether we can bump a dependency minimum required version or not. This is a
    consequence of approaching GIMP 3.0 release so we don't want to bump minimum
    versions too high.
  - GEGL requirement bumped to GEGL 0.4.46.
  - Windows installer's welcome image is now generated in several sizes
    from our splash screen image, avoiding discrepancies as well as
    unnecessarily filling our repository with a history of duplicate
    images.
  - Add some logic to common/ and python/ plug-ins to facilitate running
    GIMP from the build directory (without being installed) while still
    able to load all plug-ins.
  - gtk-mac-integration was dropped as a dependency on macOS. It made problems
    and is apparently less needed with GTK+3.
  - Supported macOS version was bumped from macOS 10.12 to macOS 10.13.

Debugging:

  - New --runtime option to `flatpak-releases` debugging script (a dev tool
    allowing for instance to bisect issues through flatpak builds). This option
    allows to list the runtime builds (additionally to the main GIMP flatpaks).

Documentation:

  - More developer docs is being moved to the new developer website.
  - Better clarify licensing of files under data/.
  - Improve flatpak maintenance doc (build/linux/flatpak/README.md).

Translations:

  - 25 translations were updated: Basque, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (China),
    Chinese (Taiwan), Danish, Esperanto, French, Georgian, German, Greek,
    Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Lithuanian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese,
    Romanian, Russian, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian.


Overview of Changes from GIMP 2.99.12 to GIMP 2.99.14
=====================================================

Core:

  - The download button in About dialog when a new version is available
    will now show the development download page when running unstable
    branch code.
  - The update check on macOS now uses native HTTPS-able API, so that we
    don't have to wait for GIO to have HTTPS modules for macOS.
  - The main process is now run as a GimpApp which is a new class derived from
    GtkApplication. The main process of `gimp-console` on the other hand is a
    `GimpConsoleApp` which is derived from GApplication. Both new classes share
    a same GimpCoreApp interface. This is a main step for the GTK+3 port.
  - Various improvements on awareness of multi-item selection across core
    features. A notable fix is the preview when transforming multiple layers at
    once (with various transform tools). Various actions are now multi-drawable
    aware as well.
  - New "Vectors Structure" in the XCF format: XCF files (format bumped to
    version 18) can now store and load all the usual and common properties of
    other items. In other words, it makes XCF now able to store locks, color
    tags and several selected paths.
  - XCF saving with RLE and zlib encoding are now multi-threaded and therefore
    much faster in most cases.
  - Pasting an image now creates a new layer by default (not a Floating Layer
    anymore). The only 3 cases where we still have floating items are:
    * when pasting into a layer mask;
    * when doing quick copy/cut paste on-canvas with the Alt modifiers;
    * when floating layers explicitly with the "Float" action.
  - Copy-paste code was deeply reviewed and re-specified in the light of
    multi-item selection; it's still a WIP:
    * When pasting several drawables, we currently paste them over the top
      selected layer (visually in Layers dockable).
    * Pasted data position was rewritten, based on existing logic, but taking
      into account the multiple selected items.
    * Pasting a selected area from multiple layers still creates multiple
      layers, not merged pixel contents as a single layer.
    * New layers created when copying from a selection are consistently the
      offset and dimensions of the bounding box of the dimension.
    * When a layer and one of its group layer parent are selected, it is
      equivalent to have only the child layer selected.
  - 2 new actions were added: "Paste as Single Layer" and "Paste as Single Layer
    in Place" under the "Paste as" submenu of Edit menu. These paste the copied
    layers as a single merged layer, instead of as several layers (as "Paste"
    and "Paste in Place" do).

Graphical User Interface:

  - New "Gray" theme based on a 18.42% luminance middle-gray background, which
    should be a good neutral environment for color work.
  - The foreground/background editor in the toolbox will now take into account
    the toolbox icon size and resize itself accordingly (live, as you change
    theme). This allows to have really narrow toolbox when you use small icons.
  - Theme-override icon size selection in Preferences > Themes: this allows to
    override theme-set icon sizes, with a global concept of small, medium, large
    and huge. The following widgets are so far modified: toolbox icons, fg/bg
    editor in toolbox, fg/bg editor in Colors dockable, dockables tab icons,
    bottom buttons (in the button box) of dockables, header eye and lock icons
    above item trees, and eye and lock icon switches in item tree cells.
  - Symmetry dockable contents is now shown, yet deactivated, when no images are
    opened, improving discoverability.
  - Reworked the "Convert to * Working Space?" dialog into a "Keep the Embedded
    Working Space?" one. Keeping an image working space is now the recommended
    and default action. "Convert" became an explicit action requiring to click
    (neither mapped to Enter nor Escape keys).
  - "Floating Selection" renamed to "Floating Layer" or "Floating Mask"
    depending on the type of item it applies to.
  - "Floating Masks" are now drawn above the layer mask in the Layers dockable,
    making the fact that they would anchor to the below layer mask (not the
    layer) much more obvious.
  - "Paste into Selection" and "Paste into Selection in Place" were moved under
    the "Paste as" submenu of Edit menu.

Tools:

  - Text tool: new "Outlined" and "Outlined and filled" options, with various
    sub-options to choose the outline style, color, pattern, width, cap and join
    styles, miter limit, anti-aliasing and dash pattern.
  - Align tool:
    * now multi-item aware, it is much more usable than it used to be when we
      had to click on canvas to select items.
    * On-canvas clicks are now only needed to select guides (Alt or Alt-Shift
      click and selected guide colors change) or for the reference object
      (normal click).
    * Also the reference object gets on-canvas handles and the name is written
      in the dockable, making it obvious if you selected the right reference or
      not.
    * Moreover the selected reference will now loop when layers are stacked on
      each other, which allow to select a bottom layer, even if there are layers
      above it everywhere.
    * New option "Use extents of layer contents" to Align tool: this is similar
      to first run "Crop to Content" on every layer to align or distribute
      (without actually cropping the layers).
    * Fine-grained align/distribute button sensitivity to make it more obvious
      when an action would not make any change anyway.
    * New anchor point setting (pivot widget) to choose which part of the target
      items will be aligned or distributed.
    * Get rid of various broken distribution actions.
    * Distribution actions don't move the 2 extreme (top/bottom or left/right
      depending on distribution direction) targets, but distribute all other
      targets within their range. It is more consistent with how it works in
      other software.
    * Adding 2 "Distribute with evenly (horizontal|vertical) gaps" actions,
      which distribute by keeping a common gap between objects instead of
      between anchor points.
    * Offset settings have been removed.
  - Transform tools are now auto-activated on selection (and when switching
    images or item selection).

Plug-ins:

  - PDF:
    * Export code was ported to GimpProcedureDialog.
    * New "root-layers-only" argument to "file-pdf-save", which comes
      with a checkbox in the export dialog to allow exporting as pages
      the root layers only. The main usage is to organize your pages'
      contents in layer groups.
  - AVIF:
    * RGB AVIF compatibility with Safari on iOS 16.0: Some AVIF images are
      rendered differently in Apple's implementation compared to implementations
      of Google and Mozilla. See: https://github.com/AOMediaCodec/av1-avif/issues/195
      This changes requires libheif 1.10.0 though the plug-in can still build
      with older libheif.
  - PSD:
    * export of CMYK(A) files added, with 8 or 16-bit precision per channel,
      using a CMYK soft-proof profile for conversion.
    * Paths are now exported with PSD files.
  - JPEG-XL:
    * Metadata import/export now supported (requires libjxl 0.7.0).
  - Python-Console:
    * sys.stdout.flush() implemented as a no-op inside the console, to be able
      to easily copy-paste code, or using libraries which flush the output.
  - ICNS:
    * Initial support for loading and exporting.
  - TIFF:
    * New toggle to optionally load reduced pages. We keep a heuristic to try
      and guess whether these are thumbnails (single reduced image in the second
      position), but it's only used to decide whether the option is checked by
      default or not. It is now up to anyone to decide or not whether they want
      to load these reduced images.

API:

  - Changes in libgimp:
    * Abstract method get_window() of GimpProgressVtable had its signature
      changed. The window ID is now a guint64.
    * New functions:
      + gimp_text_layer_set_markup()
      + gimp_image_get_selected_channels()
      + gimp_image_get_selected_vectors()
      + gimp_image_list_selected_channels()
      + gimp_image_list_selected_vectors()
      + gimp_image_set_selected_channels()
      + gimp_image_set_selected_vectors()
      + gimp_image_take_selected_channels()
      + gimp_image_take_selected_vectors()
      + gimp_image_list_selected_drawables()
    * Updated functions:
      + gimp_vectors_stroke_translate() now uses offsets in double type.
    * New classes:
      + GimpTextLayer: child class of GimpLayer.
  - Changes in libgimpwidgets:
    * Updated widgets:
      + GimpPickButton now has a specific implementation for Windows. In
        particular it improves color picking with multi-monitor and scales
        different than 100%.

Build:

  - meson requirement bump to meson 0.56.0.
  - Many fixes to the meson build scripts, making it closer to be our
    official build for GIMP 3.0.
  - The CI now generates a tarball containing the GIMP references,
    generated by gi-docgen and g-ir-doc.
  - Improved Clang 15.0.0 support.
  - "win*-nightly" jobs were added back and are now more efficient with the
    --output-dll-list option.
  - babl requirement bumped to babl 0.1.98.
  - GEGL requirement bumped to GEGL 0.4.40.
  - GIMP macOS builds (gimp-macos-build repository) was moved to using MacPorts
    in order to take advantage of a bigger community to maintain our
    dependencies.
  - GIMP now has an Apple Silicon build.


Overview of Changes from GIMP 2.99.10 to GIMP 2.99.12
=====================================================

Core:

  - Added concept of "hidden item" to a GimpImage. This would allow to
    process non attached items for internal processing more easily.
  - Do not show a crosshair anymore when "Show brush outline" is
    checked and "Show pointer for paint tools" is unchecked, if the
    brush outline cannot be drawn (in which case a fallback 4-arcs
    generic outline showing the size is displayed), for instance because
    using a dynamic changing the size.
  - When both "Show brush outline" and "Show pointer for paint tools"
    are unchecked, show a minimal visual feedback of a few pixels only,
    as inconspicuous as possible, instead of a crosshair.
  - Move and reorganize pointer-related settings in Preferences from
    "Image Windows" to "Input Devices" tabs.
  - On macOS, delay opening new images dropped on the application icon
    in the dock to after GIMP is fully initialized.
  - Some code reorganization and factorization of image colormap and
    palette handling.
  - Language changes will trigger plug-in query() call at next GIMP
    restart. This allows to have strings in query() and stored in GIMP
    config being re-localized. This implies both explicit language
    changes in Preferences or system language changes when GIMP is set
    to follow system language.
  - Keyboard grab removed from the canvas display, hence getting rid of
    annoying grab permission warnings on Wayland.
  - Preferences > Display > Transparency > Check style has now a new
    option "Custom checks" allowing to select any RGB colors.
  - Full migration from intltool to gettext only.
  - The soft-proof profile, soft-proofing rendering intent and whether
    black point compensation is used when soft-proofing are now image
    data. These have also been moved to the Image menu (out of View).
    These 3 simulation data are also stored in the XCF file now.
  - Hacks on canvas rulers and statusbar added in GIMP 2.99.10 for macOS
    triggering too big redraws were removed. This depends on patches
    added to upcoming GTK+ 3.24.35.
  - CMYK color picking and sample point now use babl and the space
    specified by the soft-proof profile set on the image, if any.
  - The "Create New Image" dialog now has settings for the simulation
    profile, intent and black point compensation. This is also shown in
    templates and the "Default Image" tab in Preferences, and has been
    removed from the "Color Management" tab, because these are now first
    and foremost image data.
  - GimpColorFrame is now current image's simulation profile/intent/bpc
    aware. In other words, CMYK shown by the color picker or in sample
    point shows values in the correct simulation space (not in some
    default CMYK space).
  - A new default action to change the current brush size was mapped to
    Alt + right button click.
  - Some Preferences settings have been moved to a new Preferences >
    Canvas Interaction tab.
  - All on-canvas interactions (panning, canvas rotation, etc.) are now
    customizable in Preferences > Canvas Interaction > Modifiers tab. It
    allows to switch/change the modifiers used for an action, or even
    just remove some modifiers mapping (when you never use an action,
    e.g. some people say the canvas rotation is not useful to them).
  - GtkAction-s can also be mapped to modifiers now through the same
    settings.
  - GIMP themes can now have a "gimp-dark.css" file which will be used
    if the "Use dark theme variant if available" option was checked.
  - The FG/BG editor area in the toolbox is now sized relatively to
    toolbox icon size, allowing for it to be much bigger when using big
    icons, or smaller when using small icons (which can e.g. be aligned
    on a very narrow single column for people who appreciate this
    organization).
  - The Welcome dialog can now show "demo" bullet points, from scenarios
    written within the Appstream metadata.

Tools:

  - The "Fill by line art detection" mode of the Bucket Fill tool got
    the following improvements:
    * New "Stroke borders" option where you can select a paint tool
      (except source tools) to stroke the fill mask before filling with
      the color. The settings will be the ones as set on the
      corresponding tool (except for the color).
    * The options got reorganized in 3 sections (Line Art Detection,
      Line Art Closure and Fill Borders) and some options were reworded.
      This should hopefully make the now many options more
      understandable.
  - Full text layer's text size will now be changed when changing font
    size in the text editor window, when no text is selected.
  - Raise tool options before blinking specific settings widgets when
    some tools fail to work because of various tool options settings
    (e.g. selection tool cannot remove from an empty selection; warp
    tool cannot stroke; move tool cannot move because of the types of
    object to move isn't selected; and so on).

Graphical User Interface:

  - New "Drag to Zoom" mode and speed settings in Preferences. Existing
    drag-to-zoom behavior was linear depending only on pointer direction
    (which makes it more or less time-based if we consider that pointer
    events are regular). The new mode will take the actual distance
    moved into account allowing to go faster or slower by dragging
    further or not. The "speed" settings allows a finer zoom speed
    control for both the old and new modes.
  - Touchpad gesture rotation (2-finger pinch) on canvas now
    implemented. Note that rotation or scaling by pinch are exclusive so
    GIMP will detect the expected behavior through the initial movement
    and will therefore lock on either rotation or scaling for the whole
    duration of the pinch.
  - Slight tweak of the "You will have to restart GIMP" popup: the list
    now uses nicer "bullet point" characters and the nick (short
    description) is shown rather than the internal property name.
  - New soft-proof toggle in status bar to see the soft-proofing status
    and enable/disable it. It is only active when a soft-proof profile
    was set.
  - GimpContainerTreeView (e.g. Layers/Channels/Vectors dockables) now
    have zooming through ctrl+mouse wheel (for preview size).
  - GimpContainerTreeView (e.g. Layers/Channels/Vectors dockables) now
    have zooming with touchpad pinch (touchscreen pinch now kinda exists
    but is not so usable in our tests, at least on Linux through
    libinput) for preview size.
  - Gradient editor now has zooming with touchpad pinch (touchscreen
    pinch not so fancy either, at least on Linux through libinput,
    similar to GimpContainerTreeView case).
  - A new soft-proofing pop-over dialog appears when right-clicking the
    new soft-proof toggle in the status bar. It allows to view or change
    all soft-proofing related settings (whether they are associated to
    the image, such as the profile, intent or black-point compensation;
    or to the view, such as the out-of-gamut check) very easily.
  - New "Default" theme containing a dark and light variant. As the name
    implies, this theme is now made the default theme on new
    installations.
  - New "Compact" theme containing a dark and light variant.

Command Line Interface:

  - Unless only one batch interpreter is available, there is no default
    interpreter anymore (it used to be script-fu). Therefore if you set
    `--batch` but not `--batch-interpreter`, GIMP will output an error
    message and will list the available interpreters.
  - GIMP will stop running the batch commands as soon as one command
    fails (it won't try the following ones).
  - A new `--quit` option allows you to quit GIMP immediately after
    running the batch commands.
  - If `--quit` is set and batch commands are run, the GIMP binary exit
    code will propagate errors from any batch failure. Exit codes are
    taken from common Linux error codes: 0 for success, 69 for service
    unavailable (e.g. setting a non-existing interpreter name), 64 for
    usage (e.g. not specifying any interpreter or calling errors), 70
    for execution errors (bugs in the interpreter plug-in) and 130 for
    canceling the call.

Plug-ins:

  - BigTIFF: our TIFF plug-in now officially supports BigTIFF import and
    export.
    * Import was actually already working transparently if you had
      a recent enough libtiff. Now the recent libtiff is enforced by
      dependency requirements.
    * Export support was added with a checkbox in the interactive dialog
      and a new "bigtiff" argument in the "file-tiff-save" PDB
      procedure.
    * When an interactive export of ClassicTIFF fails for the explicit
      reason of "Maximum TIFF file size exceeded", the export dialog is
      raised again with a message proposing to try again as BigTIFF or
      trying another compression algorithm.
      This allows because discoverability and understandibility of the
      issue, while not forcing BigTIFF export (since it might not be
      supported everywhere).
  - GIF: new option to specify a number of repeat for animated GIF
    (rather than single run vs. infinite loop only).
  - help-browser: rewritten to use GtkAction and GtkApplication, even
    though it's now a deprecated plug-in (though it's a good example for
    porting other plug-ins the same way).
  - PNG:
    * the format does not have any flag for linear RGB, but it can
      simply include a linear profile (or a 1.0 gAMA chunk). Therefore
      since we always attach the profile when importing (or transform
      the gAMA chunk into a profile), we now always load PNG images as
      non-linear backend.
    * Add toggle to choose PNG bit depth behavior.
  - python-fu-eval and plug-in-script-fu-eval ported to new
    GimpBatchProcedure class.
  - JPEG:
    * CMYK export is now possible. It uses the "Soft-proofing"
      profile set on the image.
    * CMYK import ported to GEGL/babl conversion. The CMYK profile in
      the JPEG image will be stored as soft-proof profile on the image.
  - WebP:
    * new option "Use Sharp YUV" available in non-lossless export.
      It renders sharper edges at the cost of a slower export.
    * On export, the "bad image dimensions" error message is now more
      accurate and tells the max dimension possible for WebP images
      (16383 as it's stored on 14 bits).
  - DDS:
    * 16-bit masks now supported.
    * DDS images with single 16-bit channel support added.
    * DDS images with 2 16-bit channels correctly converted to 16-bit
      RGB images.
    * More robust DDS loading.
  - script-fu:
    * Various updates to get the API back in shape.
    * Porting doc updated.
    * "script-fu-server" was now extracted into its own separate
      plug-in so that it doesn't need to run permanently with the
      script-fu extension (could be seen as security hazard too) and it
      also makes each of these plug-ins more robust by being on their
      own process each.
    * A new `gimp-script-fu-interpreter-3.0` binary is installed
      globally to be used to create Scheme plug-ins, similarly to other
      plug-ins, in particular in the plug-ins/ directory, not the
      scripts/ directory anymore. Moreover it makes the whole script-fu
      infrastructure much more robust as script-fu individual scripts
      won't crash the whole script-fu extension any longer (they only
      crash themselves).
      Note: this is not a GObject Introspected Scheme binding, just our
      own binding based on script-fu interpreter. Script-fu plug-ins
      still don't have access to the whole of libgimp.
    * New function 'script-fu-register-filter' to declare a multi-layer
      capable script.
    * Many script-fu scripts were ported to newer API.
  - FLI:
    * Internal type usage improvements, mnemonics added, etc.
    * 1-frame animation now loaded correctly (it's not really an
      animation then, yet it should still open!).
    * Better error handling.
    * Layer names now include the delay in ms.
    * More robust FLI/FLC loading, double-checking data rather than
      assuming that the file writer properly followed the specs.
  - Several plug-ins now follow the user-set checkboard color
    preferences, when relevant.
  - RAW data:
    * Improved export dialog with better labels and ported to new dialog
      generation API.
    * Improved import dialog, ported to new dialog generation API, with
      factorized code to more easily handle more cases.
    * High bit depth import/export support.
    * All the exportable formats can now be loaded back.
    * "file-raw-load" and "file-raw-save" procedures API are now much
      better with all relevant arguments.
    * "file-hgt-load" doesn't show a dialog anymore when sample spacing
      detection worked correctly since we already have all the necessary
      information.
  - WBMP: new plug-in to load WBPM image files. It is still limited
    support and doesn't support all types of WBMP images.
  - TIFF:
    * 8 and 16-bit CMYK(A) TIFF files can be exported, using the
      image soft-proof profile.
    * Imported CMYK TIFF profiles are now set as soft-proof profile
      on the image.
  - SVG: on import, when parsing fails, GIMP will propose to disable
    size parsing limitations, while explaining this has security
    implications and should only be done on SVG files from trusted
    sources.
  - PSD:
    * Import now uses babl conversion inconditionally, even for CMYK
      images, using the soft-proof profile set on the image.
    * Improved error logging during load.
    * CMYK profile on a CMYK PSD file is now stored as soft-proof
      profile in the image.
    * Added support for extra layer mask: According to the specs the
      extra mask (which they call real user supplied layer mask) is used
      "when both a user mask and a vector mask are present".
      We haven't seen an example that has the extra mask, so not sure
      which of the masks would appear first.
      For now assuming that the extra mask will be first. The advantage
      of adding this here now, is that we won't try to add a mask
      channel as a normal channel.
    * Minimal support of duotone data: on import, a duotone image will
      be imported as grayscale image with an alert and the color
      information will be stored in a parasite; on export, a dialog will
      propose you to re-include the duotone data if the image is still
      grayscale. This allows for a roundtrip in GIMP without losing the
      duotone information.
  - ANI: new import/export support.

API:

  - Changes in libgimpbase:
    * gimp_checks_get_colors() added.
    * gimp_checks_get_shades() removed (replaced by gimp_checks_get_colors())
  - Changes in libgimpcolor:
    * New functions:
      + gimp_color_managed_get_simulation_profile()
      + gimp_color_managed_simulation_profile_changed()
      + gimp_color_managed_get_simulation_bpc()
      + gimp_color_managed_get_simulation_intent()
      + gimp_color_managed_simulation_bpc_changed()
      + gimp_color_managed_simulation_intent_changed()
  - Changes in libgimp:
    * New functions:
      + gimp_image_metadata_save_filter()
      + gimp_check_custom_color1()
      + gimp_check_custom_color2()
      + gimp_procedure_dialog_get_int_radio()
      + gimp_procedure_dialog_get_file_chooser()
      + gimp_image_get_simulation_profile()
      + gimp_image_set_simulation_profile()
      + gimp_image_set_simulation_profile_from_file()
      + gimp_image_get_selected_drawables()
      + gimp_image_get_simulation_bpc()
      + gimp_image_get_simulation_intent()
      + gimp_image_set_simulation_bpc()
      + gimp_image_set_simulation_intent()
    * Removed functions:
      + gimp_plug_in_set_translation_domain()
      + image_get_active_drawable()
      + image_get_active_layer()
      + image_set_active_layer()
      + image_get_active_channel()
      + image_set_active_channel()
      + image_get_active_vectors()
      + image_set_active_vectors()
    * Updated functions:
      + gimp_procedure_dialog_get_widget() now supports
        %G_TYPE_PARAM_FILE and %G_TYPE_PARAM_ENUM properties.
      + gimp_prop_file_chooser_button_new() now works with
        G_PARAM_SPEC_OBJECT having a value_type == G_TYPE_FILE
        (additionally to GIMP_PARAM_SPEC_CONFIG_PATH properties).
    * Functions skipped by bindings:
      + gimp_get_images() (in favor of gimp_list_*() variant)
      + gimp_image_get_layers() (in favor of gimp_image_list_*() variant)
      + gimp_image_get_channels() (in favor of gimp_image_list_*() variant)
      + gimp_image_get_vectors() (in favor of gimp_image_list_*() variant)
      + gimp_image_get_selected_layers() (in favor of gimp_image_list_*()
        variant)
      + gimp_item_get_children() (in favor of gimp_item_list_*() variant)
    * New class:
      + GimpBatchProcedure: procedure usable as a batch interpreter on
        command line.
    * Protocol bumped to handle the check colors passed at call time on
      the wire.
    * Plug-ins are now expected to have their localization in a Gettext
      catalog folder locale/ under their main directory, named the same
      way as this directory (i.e. usually the plug-in name). If the
      catalog is absent, a message will be outputted on stderr. To
      override this behavior, a GimpPlugIn is encouraged to override the
      new set_i18n() method. If it returns FALSE, localization is
      disabled (or it may be implemented in a different way, for
      instance with another system than Gettext); if it returns TRUE,
      you can set a different subfolder and catalog name.
    * The core does not localize menu items from plug-ins anymore. All
      plug-ins are now expected to handle their localization within
      their code. In particular gimp_procedure_set_menu_label() and
      gimp_procedure_set_documentation() should now pass the localized
      text. With gettext, it usually means passing arguments through
      gettext() and not just marking them with N_().
  - Changes in libgimpwidgets:
    * Freedesktop portal implementation of GimpPickButton now checks the
      version of the XDG portal since `PickColor()` API only got added
      in version 2.
    * New classes:
      + GimpIntRadioFrame
    * New functions:
      + gimp_color_notebook_set_simulation()
      + gimp_color_selection_set_simulation()
      + gimp_color_selector_set_simulation()
    * Removed functions:
      + gimp_prop_int_radio_box_new()
    * Updated functions:
      + GimpColorNotebook, GimpColorSelection and GimpColorSelector are
        now ported to babl code and are simulation space aware.
      + GimpPickButton will now use the X11 color picking API as a
        default when GIMP is running on X11 (instead of trying the
        portals first), because it has color space information of the
        display (so we can convert back the color from display space to
        image space); and also on some desktop, the portal looks
        available while it's actually not implemented (hence picking
        fails).
        This fixes or improves the color picking in the Colors dockable,
        in Change Foreground/Background Color dialogs, etc.
  - Changes in PDB:
    * gimp-plug-in-domain-register removed.

Modules:

  - The CMYK color selector is now simulation space aware, i.e. that it
    shows CMYK values in the soft-proof profile space if a soft-proof
    profile has been set.

Translations:

  - New Galician and Georgian translations for the installer.

Build:

  - libtiff dependency's minimum required version bumped to 4.0.0.
  - gexiv2 dependency's minimum required version bumped to 0.14.0.
  - Our meson/Debian CI now runs `meson dist` too.
  - gvfs is marked as an expected dependency for GIMP (as a GIO module)
    on Linux, since it seems we wouldn't have HTTP support without. This
    is only written in the INSTALL file though, no tests are run on
    configure time.
  - The distribution stage now has a new `dev-docs` job containing both
    the C API reference (gi-docgen) and the Python and Javascript (gjs)
    ones (g-ir-doc).
  - The `pdbgen` (generation of PDB source files) build step is finally
    ported to meson too, which is a major step to one day consider this
    build system out of the "experimental" zone.
  - Windows installer's gettext files (.po) will now also contain
    extracted comments from the source to give more context to
    translators.
  - Flatpak manifest upgraded with new version constraints so that the
    flatpak-external-data-checker does not warn wrongly on major update
    when we don't want to or can't update immediately.
  - meson is now recommended for Windows and macOS builds and our
    official installer and DMG respectively are now built (still from
    CI) with meson.
  - Flatpak manifest improved with version constraints for dependencies
    where we should not update just yet (hence don't want new version
    notifications).
  - appstream-util replaced by appstreamcli for AppStream file testing
    (requires appstreamcli 0.15.3 or over).
  - gi-docgen API documentation will now properly link to other API
    namespaces thanks to a new urlmap file.
  - Separate libgimp-scriptfu-3.0 library for a future where it will be
    shared by several binaries.
  - GEGL dependency's minimum required version bumped to 0.4.38.
  - "flatpak" job now uses a gnome-runtime-images migrated to Quay.
  - "win*-nightly" jobs removed.
  - Improved meson infrastructure to support Windows installer languages
    which don't have base language files provided by upstream InnoSetup.
    We started using it for Kabyle (which was showing up as "English"
    otherwise!).
  - After various fixes and implementations of missing build features to
    the meson scripts, we are going to start advising packagers (for all
    platforms) to build GIMP 2.99.12 with meson as a trial by fire to
    make it the new default build system.
  - New "sources-meson" CI job to distribute a tarball built with the
    meson scripts.
  - INSTALL now targets meson build as a test recommendation. We'll see
    if any issue arises from packagers!
  - Improved support for homebrew build on macOS.

Documentation:

  - Draft devel doc for scriptfu v3 script authors.


Overview of Changes from GIMP 2.99.8 to GIMP 2.99.10
====================================================

Core:

  - Linked layers concept replaced by named sets of layers:
    * One can now store your current selection of layers under any given
      name and select it again later.
    * You can also search for layers by their names with patterns
      (as configured in Preferences, see next news item) and save this
      pattern search if desired.
  - Preferences > Interface now has an "Item search" with a dropdown
    settings proposing the following values:
    * Basic text search: this search does tokenization, case-folding and
      UTF-8 normalization. Moreover ASCII alternates are compared, which
      means that e.g. "e" would matched accented versions (such as "é"
      or others).
    * Glob pattern search: this is the GLib implementation of this
      pattern syntax. It matches '*' (wildcard) and '?' (joker). GLib
      docs notes also: "Note that in contrast to glob(), the '/'
      character can be matched by the wildcards, there are no '[...]'
      character ranges and '*' and '?' can not be escaped to include
      them literally in a pattern."
    * Regular expression search: Perl-compatible regular expressions as
      implemented in GLib.
  - New item visibility lock: forbidding to change the state of
    visibility of a given item. This is useful when shift-clicking
    massively items visibility, but you want to exclude some specific
    items from the visibility switch.
  - New internal API gimp_widget_blink_rect() to blink only specific
    area of a widget, which may be useful for various notification-type
    exchanges. This is used in particular to blink lock cells in
    GimpItemTreeView in order to point attention to the reason why an
    action is forbidden (e.g. when trying to paint on a layer with
    pixels locked, a message would be shown on status bar and the "Lock
    pixels" icon would blink).
  - XCF version 16 with support of item sets.
  - Wayland:
    * Clean some popup code out of gtk_menu_popup() which is deprecated
      and won't work anymore on Wayland (wrong positionning).
    * Use GtkGestureDrag in ColorWheel module and ScrolledPreview widget
      to avoid unwanted popups and make us future-proof for GTK4.
  - macOS: various improvements for macOS support of the development
    version. In particular the slowness issues have been solved and
    various bugs have been fixed.
  - The debug dialog only gets a backtrace of the main thread now,
    because of some bugs in GDB locking GIMP when trying to get a full
    backtrace for all threads.
  - The line art data is now stored for a few additional minutes in the
    user context after closing the bucket fill tool. This allows quick
    switch between tools without forcing a recomputation of the line
    art.
  - Stroking a path with source tools (Clone, Heal…) is now possible
    when the tool is active and a source was selected.
    Technically it's more of a bug fix because the GUI existed as though
    it was meant to work, but since the report has existed for more than
    13 years and I'm not sure it has ever worked, it's worth writing it
    here.
  - Block the statusbar from needlessly triggering full canvas redraws
    by not propagating its resize requests. This is quite a useful
    optimization for macOS in particular (but any OS in general too).
  - Alpha and position locks can now be set on layer groups. Alpha lock
    on groups mostly works like pixel lock (except for the alpha channel
    only). Position lock work both ways by forbidding moving child
    layers but also parent layers.
  - XCF version 17 with support of visibility locks, as well as ability
    to set alpha or position locks on layer groups.

User Interface:

  - Link icon removed from the Layers dockable.
  - Lock icon its now made visible next to the "Eye" icon (visibility)
    on each item row, where the Link icon was. It raises a popover to
    switch all available locks (contents, position, visibility, alpha):
    * This makes locks much more obvious rather than when they were at
      the dockable header.
    * This also works better with multiple selection of items (when one
      selected item is locked and another is not, the lock button were
      ending up in inconsistent state).
    * This is clearer by showing or not icons (rather than always
      showing several icons, yet with toggle design which is not even so
      understandable depending on the theme used). If no locks are set,
      nothing is shown; if only one lock is set, a specific icon is
      shown; if several locks are set, a multi-lock icon is shown (and
      one need to click to get the list of locks).
    * Locks can now be set massively with shift and alt-click (see next
      item) with the same logics as you can change visibility massively
      on the eye button.
  - Visibility (eye icon) and lock columns in the item dockables are
    given an icon header to be more discoverable.
  - Alt-click on eye and lock icons allows to massively switch
    visibility/lock state but only within selected items (unlike
    shift-click which switch within all items at same level).
  - Channels and vectors are now multi-selectable (though actions may
    have not been all updated yet to handle multiple items).
  - On-hover indicators around inactive/unset eye/locked toggles in
    Layer/Channels/Paths dialogs.
  - GimpSpinScale made more compact.
  - New "Welcome dialog" which appears only after a new installation or
    an update, will show a few common links, and the release notes
    (taken from the AppStream data, so they can even be localized).
  - The new "Welcome dialog" comes with a new splash screen by Aryeom.

Tools:

  - It is now possible to enable/disable dynamics in a single checkbox.
    The dynamics "Dynamics Off" which used to be in the default list has
    been removed as disabling dynamics is now equivalent and much faster
    (it's also faster to get back to whatever dynamics you were using
    before).
  - A new action "context-dynamics-toggle" is available, allowing to
    switch dynamics ON/OFF (see previous news item) with a shortcut.
  - New option "Allow closing lines in selected layer" in the "Fill by
    line art detection" mode of bucket fill tool. Basically this allows
    to use the fill color (foreground or background color) as closure
    color in the drawable to be filled. This is an additional step after
    the line art computation to allow fast usage.

Plug-ins:

  - PSD:
    * new support for loading 16-bit per channel CMYK images.
    * new support for files in LAB colorspace.
    * new support for loading 32-bit per channel images (some code
      existed yet may have never really worked).
    * Add extra layer groups when loading PSD images with clipping
      layers: PhotoShop handles clipping layers in a different way than
      GIMP. The only way to have it look the same is by adding extra
      layer groups. PSD layers that have clipping set, combined with the
      first non clipping layer below it are grouped together in a new
      layer group. Doing this results in the same image as the PSD
      merged image unless there are other PSD elements in play that we
      don't handle yet.
    * PSD layers with clipping set need clip to backdrop as composite
      mode: Certain PSD layers have a flag called clipping set to 1. We
      were not handling this flag and had some reports about colors
      bleeding where they were not supposed to. We are going to set
      GIMP's layer composite_mode to GIMP_LAYER_COMPOSITE_CLIP_TO_BACKDROP,
      which is the closest we can get to PhotoShop's clipping. With
      this, the colors won't bleed anymore.
  - JPEG XL:
    * Bit depth now selectable in JXL export.
    * Import in 8-bit and 16-bit integer precision now possible for
      lossless images. (GIMP used to import all JXL images as 32-bit float
      precision images).
    * New very fast export settings: thunder and lightning (fastest).
    * Compression slider is disabled for lossless.
  - Screenshot:
    * Remove KDE and GNOME screenshot portal in favor of Freedesktop
      portal. Security restrictions make them more and more unsuable on
      recent KDE and GNOME versions.
    * Set the "interactive" option to TRUE for the Freedesktop API, so
      that the screenshot options are presented immediately (instead of
      taking a screenshot, then only proposing options to try again).
      This is more consistent to how our non-D-Bus screenshot plug-in
      used to work.
    * Windows: cursor capture option now available.
  - CUR: added load and export support for Microsoft Windows cursor
    (.cur) files.
  - HEIF: bit depth heuristic removed for the settings. The plug-in just
    stores and set back the last used values as for other settings
    instead of trying to be "clever".
  - help-browser and webpage are now marked "unmaintained" and building
    them is discouraged, except for developers. The reasons are: the
    multiple problems for building, while it is not even available on
    Windows anymore (and unsure if it will ever be solved anytime soon),
    bringing features which nowadays most people have with browsers
    installed by default on systems (allowing to read the manual and
    take full webpage screenshots).

Build:

  - Improved Coding Style document with commit message styling, git
    usage, comment styling, natural language text rules, localization
    and some section reorganization.
  - GExiv2 dependency bumped to 0.12.2 (fixing bothersome warnings on
    some unknown metadata domains).
  - libjxl dependency bumped to 0.6.1.
  - New meson option -Dcan-crosscompile-gir=true to force
    GObject-Introspection generation even when cross-compiling (some
    people manage to do it, e.g. with Yocto).
  - Added .clang-format file and new CI pipeline to verify coding-style
    issues in merge requests.
  - New tool `flatpak-releases` to easily list and install specific
    versions of our flatpak builds, which can be a great help when
    debugging or trying to bisect with released binaries.
  - Important refactoring of icon builds:
    * Whether using meson or autotools, and whether installing vector
      icons or raster ones (with --disable-vector-icons), the same lists
      are always used and no icons are missing. The new custom tool
      tools/generate-icon-makefiles.py makes sure the Makefile list is
      in sync with the meson one.
      The lists are committed in icons/icon-lists/ with a "usage
      grouping" logics when possible.
    * PNG versions for Color and Symbolic icon themes should not be
      committed anymore. The Symbolic PNG version are generated with
      GTK tool gtk-encode-symbolic-svg and the Color PNG version are
      rendered with a new custom tool tools/colorsvg2png.c.
    * New weekly CI to build with raster icons on meson and autotools
      and making sure the build systems are well synced.
    * Meson's -Dvec-icons option renamed to -Dvector-icons.
  - meson dependency bumped to 0.53.0.
  - We recommend fontconfig 2.13.95 or over on Windows where support for
    user-installed fonts (feature appeared in Windows 1809) was
    implemented. GIMP had its own workaround until now, which got
    removed in this version.
  - Optimization of the DLL search script for creating the Windows
    installer, which made the "packaging-win*-native" jobs in particular
    run from over 2 hours in some cases to about 10 minutes. So it's a
    big gain for the creation wait for the Windows installer.
  - GEGL minimum required version bumped to 0.4.36.

API:

  - Vala bindings gimp-3.vapi and gimp-ui-3.vapi were renamed to
    gimp-3.0.vapi and gimp-ui-3.0.vapi respectively in the autotools
    build (now consistent with meson).
  - Changes in libgimp:
    * GimpStringArray type was removed in favor of GStrv. Various libgimp
      API were updated to use GStrv, and relevant plug-in procedures with
      GStrv arguments or return values were updated as well.
    * New functions:
      + gimp_context_are_dynamics_enabled()
      + gimp_context_enable_dynamics().
      + gimp_item_get_lock_visibility()
      + gimp_item_set_lock_visibility()
      + gimp_pdb_run_procedure_config()
    * Removed functions:
      + gimp_item_get_linked()
      + gimp_item_set_linked()
  - Changes in libgimpui:
    * New widgets:
      + GimpLabelColor (now used by default for GimpRGB properties in
        GimpProcedureDialog)
      + GimpLabelEntry (now used by default for string properties in
        GimpProcedureDialog)
      + GimpSpinScale (formerly a core-only widget, e.g. used by the
        "Opacity" slider on the Layers dockable, moved to libgimpui to be
        usable by plug-ins)
    * New functions:
      + gimp_color_area_enable_drag()
      + gimp_event_triggers_context_menu(): alternative to
        gdk_event_triggers_context_menu() with the additional ability of
        using button release events as contextual menu triggering
        (instead of press events), which might be prefered in some
        cases. Other than this, it uses exactly the same conditions as
        its GDK counterpart.
      + gimp_procedure_dialog_get_spin_scale()
      + gimp_prop_label_color_new().
      + gimp_prop_label_entry_new()
      + gimp_prop_spin_scale_new()
      + gimp_prop_widget_set_factor()
    * Improved functions:
      + gimp_procedure_dialog_get_widget() can now generate widgets of
        type GimpSpinScale (for int/double properties) and GimpLabelColor
        or GimpColorButton (for GimpRGB properties).
      + gimp_procedure_dialog_get_color_widget() now only return
        GimpLabelColor widgets (editable or not).


Documentation:

  - API documentation is now built with `gi-docgen` instead of
    `gtk-doc`. The syntax for in-comment documentation is slightly
    changed.
  - Important rework of the developer documentation has started in
    devel-docs/.

Translations:

  - 20 translations were updated: Basque, British English, Catalan,
    Chinese (China), Danish, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Kabyle,
    Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Slovenian,
    Spanish, Swedish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese.


Overview of Changes from GIMP 2.99.6 to GIMP 2.99.8
===================================================

Core:

  - Selection display implementation now updated to more modern display
    server logics when drawing to display buffer. This fixes selection
    drawing in Wayland and macOS Big Sur.
  - "Create a New Image" default action is "OK" so that hitting Enter in
    text/number fields is equivalent to clicking OK.
  - Paint tool core code can now receive multiple drawables as input
    though it is disabled by default, unless a tool calls
    gimp_paint_tool_enable_multi_paint() in its init() method. This is
    only used in source tools so far.
  - Clicking anywhere on toolbox empty space (dead areas between
    buttons) or on Wilber's drop area, as well as on the toolbox buttons
    themselves, actively focuses the canvas (similarly to the `Esc`
    shortcut).
  - Config folder migration for GIMP 3 with initial implementation.
  - Action "view-rotate-reset" renamed to "view-reset" (resets both
    flipping and rotate). New "view-rotate-reset" and "view-flip-reset"
    for resetting rotation and flipping respectively.
  - New GimpEarlyRc class replacing GimpLangRc for very early config
    parsing (it used to be for language setting, now also for the
    pointer input API choice on Windows).
  - All g_memdup() ported to g_memdup2() thanks to GLib version bump.
  - Various leaks and other bugs fixed, notably with several static
    analyzer results
  - Add metadata preference for saving thumbnail by default: saving a
    thumbnail is closely related to the other metadata preferences,
    but so far this was the only one that didn't have a preference for a
    default user value. A new settings in the "Image Import & Export"
    section of the Preferences allows to select whether thumbnail saving
    should be enabled by default or not.
  - 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.

Tools:

  - Clone, Heal and Perspective clone now work on multiple selected
    layers. There are 2 new modes:
    * 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.
    * When sourcing from multiple drawables then cloning into a single
      drawable, the source is the composited image. This is similar to
      "Sample Merged", except limited to a list of drawables.

User Interface:

  - Layout of the Canvas Size dialog re-designed a bit more horizontally
    after the template selector feature made it too high.
  - Thumbnail icon feature was dropped: when images were opened, the
    application icon used to be a composition of the active image and
    the application icon (Wilber). This was confusing, hard to
    distinguish and working on less and less platforms because of recent
    OS and desktop rules or logics changes.

API:

  - 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.
  - New function gimp_export_thumbnail() to query the user settings (as
    set in Preferences) on whether or not a file plug-in should export
    the image thumbnail.

Plug-ins:

  - PSD now supports bigger-than-4GiB files. File support was ported to
    GIO API with 64-bit offsets, hence allowing loading correctly very
    big files.
  - PSD now supports loading up to 99 channels (specs say that 56 is the
    max but some sample PSD files have more channels).
  - PSB file format is now supported for loading.
  - Scriptfu now handles GFile and GimpObjectArray types.
  - 16-bit SGI images now supported (until now, they were loaded as
    8-bit).
  - file-webp ported to GimpSaveProcedureDialog.
  - New JPEG XL plug-in (loading and exporting).
  - Various cleaning replacing g_file_get_path() with g_file_peek_path()

Translations:

  - New Vietnamese, Lithuanian and Portuguese translations for the
    installer.

Build:

  - Windows installer scripts updated to all supported languages.
  - New "windows-installer-langs" unit test to detect discrepancies of
    langs listed in build system, installer and gettext files.
  - New CI jobs for Windows native builds with MSYS2.
  - Less critical CI jobs (meson/clang build and cppcheck static
    analysis) moved to a scheduled run for resource saving, and 32-bit
    cross-built Windows job now only runnable manually.
  - Windows installer now built as a CI job. The installer is not
    signed. The installer creation happens on tags for releases and at
    regular scheduled intervals for tests.
  - Improved tag handling in the CI for transparent release process.
  - New flatpak job (on scheduled interval) published on GNOME Nightly
    repository.
  - Windows installer and test flatpak (to download, no repository) can
    now be built by a merge request CI when the labels "5. Windows
    Installer" and/or "5. Flatpak package" are respectively set in the
    MR labels.
  - Scalable GIMP application icon is installed too.
  - Generate SHA* checksums for CI-generated Windows installers.
  - New `CODING_STYLE.md` document in repository for our coding style
    rules.
  - Configure: --enable-check-update now has an "auto" value.
    Meson: -Dcheck-update is now a yes|no|platform-default combo.
    The auto/platform-default value defaults to "yes" on Windows and
    macOS and "no" on other platforms.
  - GLib dependency's minimum required version bumped to 2.68.0.
  - GEGL minimum required version bumped to 0.4.32.
  - Flatpak nightly build now uses the new "fallback-x11" permission
    instead of "x11" to prevent unnecessary X11 access while in Wayland.
  - Fixes to codebase making GIMP 2.99 finally building and running on
    macOS.
  - Our flatpak manifests now use the flatpak-external-data-checker tool
    with the Anitya backend allowing to monitor our dependencies and
    ensure they are always up-to-date. All dependencies have been
    updated accordingly.
  - Our desktop file now lists a `StartupWMClass` tag to better
    associate running GIMP windows with the application icon (and
    possibly other metadata).


Overview of Changes from GIMP 2.99.4 to GIMP 2.99.6
===================================================

Core:

  - Various fixes for Wayland support.
  - Canvas Size dialog now displays a template selector to simply
    resize the canvas to a known template. When the image's and
    template's pixel density don't match, a choice will be proposed to
    set the image's PPI to the template's one or to scale the template's
    pixel size with the image's pixel density.
  - Off-canvas guides are now allowed. Guides are not deleted anymore
    when dropped off-canvas, but when dropped off-viewport.
  - Pinch gesture is now possible on canvas for zooming in/out (works on
    Wayland, not on X11; untested yet on *BSD, macOS, Windows and
    others).
  - GimpAction core class now stores a reason for explaining being
    disabled. This can be used later for giving better hints on why some
    effects or plug-ins are not usable in some situations. We already
    had this feature, but by tweaking the action's tooltip, which
    prevented this to have proper styling on GUIs and disrupted action
    search (as the reason text was searched, hence may return actions it
    should not).
  - Copy|Cut-Paste could already operate on multiple layers, by merging
    the result into a single layer. It will still do this when a
    selection exists, yet will paste layers as-is otherwise. This makes
    an alternative way to move layers, which is sometimes easier than
    drag'n dropping (especially between separate images).

Tools:

  - Paint Select tool got various improvements:
    * apply a threshold on the image mask before triggering the
      automatic expansion to simplify mask handling in the gegl
      paint-select operation.
    * enable viewport-based local selection.
  - GEGL Operation tool is now moved into Filters > Generic menu because
    it behaves more like a generic filter conceptually. As other
    filters, the GEGL Operation action is now only active when there are
    opened images.

API:

  - The generate "Metadata" frame layout in a GimpSaveProcedureDialog
    has been improved to always show the same number of columns to avoid
    ugly layout with options on 3 columns, then 2 columns on the next
    line (for instance).
  - The "Reset" button in GimpProcedureDialog shows a down arrow to show
    this is actually a button menu.
  - "Save|Load Defaults" in GimpProcedureDialog are renamed as "Save
    Settings" and "Load Saved Settings". The term "defaults" was not
    very clear and could be confused with "factory defaults". Moreover
    tooltips were added and the "Load Defaults" button is now only
    sensitive if "Save Defaults" buttion has been hit at least once.
  - Annotations improved.
  - Drop g_object_notify() in favor of g_object_notify_by_pspec() in
    various implementations to avoid a slight performance hit because of
    a global lock.
  - New function gimp_parasite_get_data() replacing gimp_parasite_data()
    and gimp_parasite_data_size() in a GObject Introspection friendly
    way.
  - gimp_procedure_dialog_new() now allows a NULL title if a menu label
    was set on the GimpProcedure with gimp_procedure_set_menu_label().
  - gimp_progress_update() improved: do not update more than 20 times
    per second and do not warn on stderr when too many progression steps
    are outputted. Indeed we should not place the burden of deciding
    whether there are too much or not enough progression updates on
    plug-in developers. On the opposite, they should be encouraged to
    update the progression as often as possible while libgimp will
    handle the decision on whether it actually ignores the progression
    step or not. This makes easier plug-in development and good
    progression feedback of long process.
  - GimpInt16Array was removed: it was used neither by GIMP core nor any
    core plug-ins. If third-party plug-ins really need this type, they
    may easily reintroduce it through GimpUint8Array (array of bytes) or
    GimpInt32Array (using only a subrange).
  - New function gimp_image_take_selected_layers() similar to
    gimp_image_set_selected_layers() except that it takes a GList
    (instead of a C array) and it takes ownership of the list pointer.
  - New functions: gimp_procedure_set_sensitivity_mask() and
    gimp_procedure_get_sensitivity_mask() for plug-ins to advertize when
    a procedure should be sensitive (in particular relatively to
    multi-drawable selection).
  - GimpImageProcedure's run() functions now have an array of drawables
    as argument (instead of a single drawable), to be consistent with
    multi-drawable selection ability.
  - New gimp_plug_in_error_quark() as a generic GQuark/GError domain for
    plug-ins.
  - Several functions were renamed to be consistent with our naming
    scheme:
    * s/gimp_parasite_name/gimp_parasite_get_name/
    * s/gimp_parasite_flags/gimp_parasite_get_flags/
    * s/gimp_image_base_type/gimp_image_get_base_type/
    * s/gimp_image_width/gimp_image_get_width/
    * s/gimp_image_height/gimp_image_get_height/
    * s/gimp_drawable_bpp/gimp_drawable_get_bpp/
    * s/gimp_drawable_width/gimp_drawable_get_width/
    * s/gimp_drawable_height/gimp_drawable_get_height/
    * s/gimp_drawable_offsets/gimp_drawable_get_offsets/
  - gimp_parasite_data() and gimp_parasite_data_size() are replaced by
    gimp_parasite_get_data() which is introspection friendly.
  - libgimpconfig: GimpParasite can now be serialized. This is useful
    when using a GimpParasite procedure argument, whose random contents
    (possibly binary) can be stored across sessions.
  - Move public classes to G_DECLARE_DERIVABLE_TYPE and
    G_DECLARE_FINAL_TYPE in order not to expose useless variables to
    plug-in developers.
  - New function gimp_procedure_dialog_set_sensitive() sets
    GimpProcedureDialog's widget sensitive value or binding.
  - PDB procedure 'plug-in-autocrop-layer' multi-layer aware.
  - GimpProcedureDialog now handles GimpRGB arguments.

Plug-ins:

  - We dropped the dialog for the Freedesktop portal implementation of
    the screenshot plug-in. Basically the Freedesktop portal provides
    its own GUI with most options, so also showing ours is redundant.
    Just directly call the portal and wait for the image in return.
  - Color profile and comment is saved on each layer of a TIFF file to
    prevent any ambiguity as TIFF allows its layers to have different
    profiles.
  - On PNG import, create an ICC profile out of the gAMA and/or cHRM
    chunks, if any of them are present, if no color profile is set and
    if the sRGB chunk is not present. This happens for RGB images as
    well as grayscale images (creating respectively a RGB or grayscale
    color profile).
  - Improve PNG export in no-profile case with gAMA and cHRM chunks
    (additionally to the sRGB chunk) according to PNG spec
    recommendations. Moreover the "gamma" option has now been removed
    because we just have proper core support of this metadata through
    ICC profile creation now, which is just more powerful.
  - "gamma" option for PNG export was removed (from GUI and
    file-png-load PDB API) because it is now redundant as we have proper
    support for this metadata.
  - Various fixes and improvements to OpenRaster image support.
  - PDF export now has progression.
  - PSD import/export got multi-layer selection support.
  - Qbist:
    * make the applied pattern a bit more prominent by adding a
      label about the center pattern of the 9x9 grid (which is the
      selected one meant to be applied).
    * last used values now stored with the new API, hence surviving
      across sessions.
  - benchmark-foreground-extract.py moved to gimp-data-extras.
  - Various plug-ins now work with multiple selected drawables when
    relevant.

Devel docs:

  - Python 3 and Javascript API documentation are now generated inside
    the build directory devel-docs/g-ir-docs/html/ (not installed right
    now) if you configure the build with option --enable-g-ir-doc
    (alternative for the meson build: -Dg-ir-doc=true but the docs ends
    up incomplete so autotools build is advised, cf. #6362).

Translations:

  - New Hebrew translation for the installer.

Build:

  - Bumping minimum GEGL to version 0.4.30.


Overview of Changes from GIMP 2.99.2 to GIMP 2.99.4
===================================================

Core:

  - Action search now always show all actions, even inactive ones. In
    order not to clutter the results, inactive ones are shown after
    active results (following the same match quality level).
    Consequently the "Show unavailable actions" checkbox has been
    removed from the `Preferences > Help System` dialog.
  - Improve sample text logics for CJK fonts, showing different
    sample characters for Korean and Japanese, making detection
    at-a-glance of such fonts easier.
  - With "Ask what to do" color profile policy, profile conversion at
    image loading is not proposed anymore when the image's profile is
    the preferred profile set in Preferences for the current image type
    (currently it would only be discarded if the image's profile was the
    built-in profile, now GIMP accounts for both cases).
  - When file loading plug-ins are run, the file chooser dialog is now
    hidden until the plug-in returns.
  - GIMP tries to keep error dialogs above to raise awareness when they
    arrive (not discovered later under other dialogs).

User Interface:

  - GimpSpinScale widget improvements:
    * The widget will grab focus when starting to edit the entry, and
      in particular the current number will be fully selected (because
      often we want to just type down a completely different number
      accurately).
    * Also when giving focus to the entry with middle click (from
      anywhere inside the widget), the scale value doesn't change in the
      same time anymore.
    * Finally we can now target-click accurately the entry current value
      to edit the entry (again, without changing the value and selecting
      existing number fully) with the main button (usually left button).
      Even though middle click is simpler because we don't have to be
      accurate (we can middle-click anywhere in the spin scale widget),
      it is hardly discoverable, whereas clicking a number entry which
      is meant to be editable is the most common GUI interaction
      expectation.
    * To help feature discoverability, when hovering the widget, the
      cursor will change and show a "grab" cursor when a click would
      start an absolute edit (the cursor changes to "grabbing" when
      actually clicking and dragging the scale) or a "text" cursor when
      a click would focus the number entry. When Shift key is being
      hold, the cursor is the one for the relative edit, wherever the
      position over the widget. This should make discovering possible
      interactions with the widget a lot easier.
  - Various improvements in the Layers dockable (and similar tree view
    widgets):
    * The bigger thumbnail popup on long click (e.g. on a layer or mask
      thumbnail) does not pop out when any modifier is hold (such as
      Shift/Ctrl for multi-selection or any other modifier used for
      alternative actions).
    * Alternative actions which were available with modifier-clicks on
      layer or mask thumbnails have been moved to an Alt+ modifier when
      necessary, in order to not clash with multi-layer selection
      interaction. In particular:
      + Ctrl-click on a mask to enable/disable it now moved to
        Alt-Ctrl-click.
    * The Shift+click and Ctrl+click actions on a layer thumbnail to add
      and remove respectively a layer mask have been removed because the
      much older feature for "Alpha to Selection" already use all the
      Alt+ modifier combinations.
    * The alternative Alt+ actions now only operate on the clicked layer
      and not on the selection unlike the corresponding actions
      (available through buttons, actions and menus). Also they do not
      change the selection.  So you can Alt+click a layer for "Alpha to
      Selection", same as you can Alt+click a mask for showing it
      without triggering a selection change. This allows these
      alternative actions to not be redundant of the equivalent actions
      but complementary with a slightly different targeting behavior.
    * The various interactions with modifiers now catch the exact
      modifier combination they require, hence avoiding interaction
      cases running several actions (e.g. Alt-Ctrl on a layer thumbnail
      removes the clicked layer's alpha channel from the selection
      without modifying the selected layer while Ctrl only would modify
      the selection).

Tools:

  - New Paint Select tool in the playground. This is a tool prototype
    which would hopefully end up as a quick binary selection tool.
  - The new default dynamics is: "Pressure Size". This doesn't change
    anything for common input devices (mouses, touchpad) yet would allow
    tablet devices to directly show that pressure input is working on
    first use. Until now, people would have the impression that tablets
    are not working (even though GIMP 3 will have hotplug so it is
    actually working from scratch) just because "Dynamics Off" was the
    default.

Input Devices:

  - Various improvements to the Input Devices editor:
    * Do not show virtual devices and XTEST API (Linux/X11) device in
      the Input Devices editor as they are useless from a configuration
      standpoint.
    * Only show the axes returned by GDK instead of the whole
      list of possible axes, which made no sense.
    * Show better names for axes, as returned by GDK, for instance a X
      axis becomes often "Abs X" on a graphics tablet and "Rel X" on a
      mouse or other devices made to work relatively.
    * Don't show an empty list for devices with no axes, just don't show
      the list widget at all.
    * For each device, select by default the first axis with curve
      ability, if any, (i.e. the Pressure axis if the device has one) in
      order to make the dialog directly more useful and usable.
  - Default tool have been set on different device sources:
    * Pen devices (tablet styluses main input) now default to the
      paintbrush tool.
    * Eraser devices (tablet styluses back input) still defaults to
      eraser tool.
    * Touch screen (finger) defaults to Smudge tool.
    * All other devices defaults to paintbrush (this was already the
      case, but was broken for as long as I remember, now it should work
      properly).

API:

  - GimpFileEntry public variables were made private and a new function
    has been added: gimp_file_entry_get_entry().
  - New GimpScaleEntry and GimpColorScaleEntry widget classes and new
    relevant API for these objects, replacing the former functions
    creating various widgets and attaching them to a GtkGrid. This makes
    for easier to use and less constrained GUI functions (with a lot
    less arguments, as we try now to smartly generate appropriate
    defaults for many options; gimp_scale_entry_new() in particular went
    down from 17 arguments to 5), also better introspectability for
    bindings, and finally it will be useful for automatic dialog
    generation for plug-ins.
  - New GimpLabeled class and subclasses: GimpLabelSpin,
    GimpLabelIntWidget.
  - Several new functions for GimpProcedureDialog for automatic dialog
    generation based on input arguments. Though not mandatory, the
    various functions allow to organize better the widgets.
  - The GimpProcedureDialog class will now check that mnemonics are
    present on every option, and also that there is no duplicate
    mnemonics. It will print messages on stderr if any of these test
    fails (so that it won't bother users but developers and translators
    should be able to get feedback about missing/duplicate mnemonics).
  - GimpSaveProcedure now has generic metadata support (with an API so
    that an export procedure can declare whether it supports given
    metadata types or contents).
    Combined with a new subclass GimpSaveProcedureDialog (child of
    GimpProcedureDialog), this ensures that:
    * If a format supports a given metadata, they will always have an
      auxiliary argument with the same name across plug-ins.
    * The label and tooltips will also be always the same in the GUI.
    * Order of metadata widgets will also stay consistent.
    * The widgets will work the same (no more "Comment" text view
      missing in one plug-in but present in another, or with an entry
      here, and a text view there, and so on).
    * The metadata frame will show an "(edit)" link which will run the
      "plug-in-metadata-editor" plug-in. The eventual goal is to move
      some generic logics to the metadata editor (when it makes sense)
      and to raise awareness for metadata edition and viewing abilities.
      This is still a work-in-progress which requires much more
      improvements in said abilities.
  - New gimp_get_num_processors() function for plug-ins to be able to
    set their own multi-threading operations as configured in
    Preferences.

Plug-ins:

  - file-fli, file-tiff, file-jpeg and file-png updated to new dialog
    generation API. In the most complicated case (file-jpeg), this
    shaved 600 lines out of the plug-in code.
  - file-heif:
    - now uses gimp_get_num_processors() instead of
      g_get_num_processors() (allowing to bypass system thread info).
    - Realtime parameter is set for AOM encoder when Fast encoding
      speed is selected by user.
    - Ability to set pixel format (YUV444, RGB) is enabled
      for >= libheif 1.10 to avoid issues in older versions.
  - file-jp2 is now able to decode JPEG2000 files faster with
    multi-threading, using the thread number settings returned by
    gimp_get_num_processors().
  - Improved plug-in debugging helper infrastructure: GIMP_PLUGIN_DEBUG
    has a new `fatal-criticals` option and better defaults. Developer
    documentation got some rewriting and debugging code benefited from
    refactorization.
  - py-slice.py moved to gimp-data-extras.

Installer:

  - Various updates to adapt to the GIMP 2.99/3 build.
  - Lua made optional.

Devel docs:

  - Documentation to port GIMP 2.10 plug-ins to GIMP 3.0 has been
    started in `devel-docs/GIMP3-plug-in-porting-guide/`. It is also
    visible directly on out Gitlab instance with visual styling:
    https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/tree/master/devel-docs/GIMP3-plug-in-porting-guide

Build:

  - Bumping minimum harfbuzz version to 1.0.5 for hb_ft_font_set_funcs().
  - Bumping minimum pango version to 1.44.0 for pango_font_has_char().
  - Bumping minimum GEGL to version 0.4.28.


Overview of Changes from GIMP 2.10.x to GIMP 2.99.2
===================================================

Core:

  - Improved "space invasion".
  - New extension format support (.gex a.k.a. GIMP Extension) which is
    an archive containing various supported data. So far, it can
    package: brushes, MyPaint brushes, dynamics, patterns, gradients,
    palettes, tool presets, plug-ins, splash images and themes.
  - New extension manager allowing to enable, disable or uninstall
    installed extensions, with a dialog available in `Edit > Manage
    Extensions`.
  - Multi selection of layers now possible. Various tools and features
    are now multi-selection aware.
  - XCF format bumped to version 14 with awareness of multiple layer
    selection.
  - All code is year-2038-safe with deprecated time API replaced.
  - "Alpha to Selection" various actions warn when the result selection
    is empty.
  - Color Profile Policy (import) now exposes a "Convert to Preferred
    Profile" (fourth) choice and the import dialog default "Convert"
    action will convert the image to the preferred profile (if any was
    set, otherwise it falls back to the built-in profile). Converting to
    the built-in profile will be still available as secondary action.
  - A new "Metadata Rotation Policy" is now exposed in the Preferences
    dialog, next to the "Color Profile Policy" (in page `Preferences >
    Image Import & Export`) with 3 options: "Ask what to do", "Discard
    metadata without rotating" and "Rotate the image then discard
    metadata".
    This policy used to be handled API-size, with a dialog generated by
    libgimpui gimp_image_metadata_load_finish(), and saved in a global
    parasite. The whole logics and GUI has been moved as core logics,
    similar to the "Color Profile Policy".

User Interface:

  - Whole interface ported to GTK+3:
    * Proper HiDPI support, which will follow the system's scale factor
      for all widgets. This is a core toolkit support, unlike the basic
      better-than-nothing hacks from GIMP 2.10.x.
    * GTK+3 CSS-like support. All themes for former versions are
      therefore not working anymore.
    * GTK+3 themes have the concept of "dark variant", so a same theme
      may propose both a light and a dark versions. Preference for dark
      variants can now be checked in `Preferences > Themes > Use dark
      theme variant if available` checkbox, allowing for instance to use
      your system theme in its light variant everywhere except in GIMP.
      This option is checked by default as graphics software are often
      preferred in dark modes.
    * Symbolic icon themes are now recolored automatically according to
      the theme colors (no theme and icon theme tweaking anymore to end
      up with dark on dark or light on light interfaces), except for
      color elements whose SVG style is marked as "!important".
    * Native Wayland support.
    * Various dialogs now use Client-Side decorations and modern GTK+
      widgets are being used when relevant (e.g. GtkSwitch which gives a
      better feeling of a general "ON/OFF state").
    * Progressive/smooth scroll actions (e.g. ctrl+scroll for zooming)
      are now possible.
  - Image display rendered faster with a render cache that keeps the
    result of scaling, color management, display filters and shell mask
    (for tools like fuzzy select).
  - Shift-click on layer GimpContainerTreeView (typically the Layers
    dockable) allows to expand/collapse all item groups but the clicked
    one.
  - Compact GimpSpinScale is now the only available version.
  - Scalable symbolic icons "switch-on", "switch-off" (from GTK
    repository) and "software-update-available" (from Adwaita
    repository) are now bundled with GIMP in a "hicolor" overlay so that
    they are available even if missing from the custom theme.

Devices:

  - Device hotplug supported (thanks to GTK+3). In particular:
    * you don't need to have your tablets and other devices plugged
      before you start GIMP anymore;
    * enabling your devices in the "Configure Input Devices" dialog is
      not needed anymore. Tablets will work out-of-the box;
    * you can safely unplug and replug the same or other input devices
      while GIMP is running.
  - "Input Devices" dialog improved:
    * "Save" and "Close" buttons replaced by "OK" (save and exit),
      "Cancel" (reset and exit) and "Reset" (reset to previous settings
      but keep the dialog open).
    * "Keys" list has been discontinued. The "key" concept is
      associated to "keyboard" devices (a tablet being a "pointing
      device" with buttons, not keys) so this list was actually useless
      and only confusing.

Plug-ins:

  - Major rewrite of the API (see below). So GIMP 2.10.x plug-ins and
    below must be ported to the new API.
  - Every introspected binding which we test comes with a "Goat
    Exercise", which is a demo plug-in popping a dialog and showing its
    own source code. It processes a simple "gegl:invert" operation on a
    drawable. All "Goat Exercises" must do the same thing in the same
    way, simply in their respective languages, as documentation/example
    code for a language binding.
  - The Goat Exercise plug-ins are themselves installed as a GIMP
    Extension, as a demo for extension creation.
  - Plug-ins must be installed in their own subdirectory in
    `$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/GIMP/2.99/plug-ins/`, thus preventing data mess
    (with plug-ins coming with data and installing it all in the root
    plug-ins/ directory) and DLL hell. The main plug-in executable must
    be named the same as the directory (possibly with an added
    extension).
    E.g.: `plug-ins/my-cool-plug-in/my-cool-plug-in.py`
  - HEIF export allows selecting color subsampling/pixel format (YUV444,
    YUV420, RGB) and encoder speed (Slow, Balanced, Fast).
    Lossless option delivers visually lossless output.
  - New "file-heif-av1-load" procedure separate from "file-heif-load"
    for AVIF only.
  - shadow_bevel.py, sphere.py, whirlpinch.py and clothify.py moved to
    gimp-data-extras.

API:

  - `GimpPDB` is now a class to represent the PDB communication channel
    with GIMP. It is a singleton which exist exactly once per running
    plug-in, hence it is not meant to be manually instantiated and can
    only be returned by gimp_get_pdb(). It is mostly used to look up
    procedures declared by other plug-ins or by GIMP core, check if a
    given procedure exist and run the procedures.
  - `GimpPlugIn` is a class which every plug-in should now subclass as a
    way to create their plug-in, and override at least the methods
    query_procedures() and create_procedure(). Two other methods
    (init_procedures() and quit()) can be optionally overridden.
    The new subclass must be declared to gimp by calling gimp_main() to
    make it available to the core (PDB procedure, menu items, etc.).
    A plug-in can obtain its own GimpPlugIn instance with
    gimp_get_plug_in(). This is a singleton object which belongs to
    libgimp.
  - Plug-In procedures are now represented by a class `GimpProcedure`.
    * The subclass `GimpFileProcedure` handles file-related procedures,
      and its own subclasses `GimpLoadProcedure` and `GimpSaveProcedure`
      handle load/export procedures (file format support).
    * The subclass `GimpThumbnailProcedure` for procedures run during
      the lifetime of the GIMP session each time a plug-in thumbnail
      procedure is called.
    * The subclass `GimpImageProcedure` handles `GimpImage`-related
      procedures, i.e. any procedure which want to work on the opened
      image (GIMP core will pass through the active image and selected
      drawables to the plug-in procedure).
    * Objects of the subclass `GimpPDBProcedure` are not meant to be
      created or freed by plug-ins, they represent any `GimpProcedure`
      and are returned by `gimp_pdb_lookup_procedure()` by looking it up
      by name on the singleton `GimpPDB` object.
  - `GimpProcedureConfig` is the base class to represent the arguments
    when running a `GimpProcedure`. It implements the `GimpConfig`
    interface and will provide proper management of saved settings
    (including the last used values) and generated GUI using
    prop_widgets to plug-ins. This is still a work-in-progress.
    Currently `GimpProcedure` run function is called with a
    `GimpValueArray` whose values can be transferred into a
    `GimpProcedureConfig` by calling `gimp_procedure_config_begin_run()`
    or `gimp_procedure_config_begin_export()`.
  - `GimpDisplay` is now a class of its own.
  - `GimpImage` is now a class to represent an opened image.
  - `GimpItem` is now a class to represent various `GimpImage` items.
    * `GimpVectors` subclass represents an image path.
    * `GimpDrawable` subclass represents drawable object but is a
      simili-abstract class as it won't be a finale object class, which
      can be so far either a:
      + `GimpLayer` represents image layers.
      + `GimpChannel` represents a `GimpImage` channel which is
         typically in GIMP a named channel which can be added into a
         `GimpImage` channel stack (the "Channels" dockable in the GUI)
         with `gimp_image_insert_channel()`. This class is not really
         used to represent a color space component though this is
         conceptually the same thing (so maybe some day) and named
         channel can actually be created from an image color component
         with `gimp_channel_new_from_component()`.
         Some other specific usages have their own subclasses:
        - `GimpLayerMask` subclass is used for a `GimpLayer` mask.
        - `GimpSelection` subclass is used for a `GimpImage` selection.
  - GimpImage, GimpItem and GimpDisplay (and their various subclasses)
    represent objects which can be passed through the PDB. They are
    managed by libgimp and should not be freed by plug-ins.
  - The PDB-passing classes still have IDs which can be obtained with
    gimp_image_get_id(), gimp_item_get_id() and gimp_display_get_id()
    respectively. Conversely you can get back the object with
    gimp_image_get_by_id(), gimp_item_get_by_id() and
    gimp_display_get_by_id().
    Specific variants exist to get back an item object from its ID, such
    as gimp_layer_get_by_id(), which do additional class verification
    (other than this, they are similar to gimp_item_get_by_id()).
    **NOTE**: since objects are managed by libgimp, you are ensured that
    a `*_get_by_id()` call returns you exactly the same object you had
    previously for a given object. Consequently you can do pointer
    comparison of objects to compare images, items or displays during a
    given run. This will work because objects are unique (these are not
    several object copies representing the same remote object).
  - Type validation function which used to work on IDs now work directly
    with object arguments while new function with added `*_id*` have
    been created to validate from an object ID instead, GIMP 2.10-style.
    To verify if an ID exist:
    * gimp_image_is_valid() / gimp_image_id_is_valid()
    * gimp_item_is_valid() / gimp_item_id_is_valid()
    * gimp_display_is_valid() / gimp_display_id_is_valid()
    To check if GimpItem are from specific subclasses:
    * gimp_item_is_drawable() / gimp_item_id_is_drawable()
    * gimp_item_is_layer() / gimp_item_id_is_layer()
    * gimp_item_is_text_layer() / gimp_item_id_is_text_layer()
    * gimp_item_is_channel() / gimp_item_id_is_channel()
    * gimp_item_is_layer_mask() / gimp_item_id_is_layer_mask()
    * gimp_item_is_selection() / gimp_item_id_is_selection()
    * gimp_item_is_vectors() / gimp_item_id_is_vectors()

    **NOTE**: since these are GObject classes, you can also use the
    GObject style macros such as GIMP_IS_LAYER(). Yet these macros do
    not do any ID verification (which is not a problem anyway in most
    cases as you got the object from API calls) and will not exist in
    bindings.

    **IMPORTANT**: using IDs is mostly for internal usage and actually
    there are very few reasons to ever need to get an object ID from a
    plug-in. Usually you should rather just work only with the unique
    object pointers returned by the API.
  - The whole API has been updated to use objects instead of object IDs
    when relevant. For instance all existing libgimp functions from 2.10
    which were called on an image ID are now called on a GimpImage
    object instead.
  - All file paths procedure parameters are now handled by GIO's `GFile`
    which simplify various file handling issues (path formats, encoding,
    etc.) and brings new features (remote access, secure protocol
    support, etc.). We also got rid of the "filename" vs "raw_filename"
    differentiation in parameters. Hence all libgimp* functions with
    these parameters have been updated as well.
  - gimp_image_metadata_load_finish() is now fully GUI/GTK-code free.
    The first consequence is that it is not in libgimpui anymore, but in
    libgimp, as it should. The second consequence is that the boolean
    `interactive` argument has been removed. Now all image rotation
    logics (the part which needed a GUI) has been moved into core and
    will be automatically run when normally loading images from GIMP's
    interface, similarly as to how color profiles was already handled.
  - 2 new libgimp functions: gimp_image_policy_rotate() and
    gimp_image_policy_color_profile() are now available to explicitly
    call the Preferences-set policy on an image. This may result in a
    dialog being presented to the user if `interactive` is TRUE and
    settings is "Ask what to do".
    It is unnecessary to call these functions when developing a new
    GimpLoadProcedure because the core will automatically do the right
    thing and call these on normal image loading workflow.
    Instead if a plug-in calls such GimpLoadProcedure through the PDB,
    no such functions will be run automatically. It is up to the plug-in
    to decide what to do (no conversion, mandatory conversion, or using
    user settings, possibly with a dialog to decide, hence calling these
    functions explicitly).
  - New function gimp_export_comment() to query the user settings (as
    set in Preferences) on whether or not a file plug-in should export
    the image's comment.
  - Several functions which are returning C-array of objects with a size
    output argument now also have a GList counterpart (not as
    replacement, but as additional API):
    * gimp_get_images() -> gimp_list_images()
    * gimp_image_get_layers() -> gimp_image_list_layers()
    * gimp_image_get_selected_layers() -> gimp_image_list_selected_layers()
    * gimp_image_get_channels() -> gimp_image_list_channels()
    * gimp_image_get_vectors() -> gimp_image_list_vectors()
    * gimp_item_get_children() -> gimp_item_list_children()
  - New function gimp_vectors_stroke_reverse() to reverse a specified
    stroke in a given GimpVectors.
  - In GIMP 2.10, functions gimp_drawable_preview_get_drawable() and
    gimp_zoom_preview_get_drawable() got deprecated in favor of
    respectively gimp_drawable_preview_get_drawable_id() and
    gimp_zoom_preview_get_drawable_id(). The original names have been
    reinstated and now returns a GimpDrawable object, whereas the newer
    functions got removed.
    Similarly gimp_zoom_preview_new_from_drawable_id() and
    gimp_drawable_preview_new_from_drawable_id() are replaced by
    respectively gimp_zoom_preview_new_from_drawable() and
    gimp_drawable_preview_new_from_drawable().
  - Deprecated functions in GIMP 2.10.x have been removed. To get a list
    of these function, this file should hopefully map most of them to a
    replacement equivalent:
    devel-docs/GIMP3-plug-in-porting-guide/removed_functions.md
  - gimp_spin_button_new() had some weird compatibility macro to expand
    to a newer or older signature depending on the number of arguments.
    Now only the newer signature with 3 arguments is available.
  - Properties removed from custom widgets:
    * GimpAspectPreview, GimpDrawablePreview and GimpZoomPreview had a
      deprecated "drawable" property in favor of "drawable-id" property.
      The "drawable" property got reinstated (and the "drawable-id"
      removed) and obviously now stores a GimpDrawable object rather
      than an integer.
    * The property "stock-id" was removed from GimpHintBox and
      GimpCellRendererToggle. Use "icon-name" instead.
  - Note: there are likely more API changes, unfortunately we haven't
    kept the NEWS file up-to-start from scratch. The best is to look at
    the API generated documentation.
  - The full API is GObject Introspected into 2 modules: Gimp and
    GimpUi. This means plug-ins can be written in various non-C
    languages. So far the following languages have been tested and work
    well: Python 3, Lua, Javascript and Vala.
    (Note: Python 2 is also working, but considering that this language
    is end-of-life since 2020, we don't really care).
  - All pygimp specific Python API does not exist anymore. Python will
    use the same API as C plug-ins, introspected through GObject
    Introspection.

Documentation:

  - `devel-docs/xcf.txt` updated to handle XCF 14.

Build:

  - New meson build system. Still deemed "experimental" for the time
    being. Packagers are recommended to continue using the autotools
    build system in order to avoid build system-specific bugs.
  - Continuous integration in Gitlab with:
    - an autotools build with GCC on a Debian/testing runner
    - an autotools distcheck build on a Debian/testing runner
    - a meson build with GCC on a Debian/testing runner
    - a meson build with Clang on a Debian/testing runner
    - a meson cross-build with Mingw-w64 for Windows 32-bit
    - a meson cross-build with Mingw-w64 for Windows 64-bit
    - static code analysis with cppcheck
    - a source tarball distribution job (tar.bz2 and tar.xz)
    - a ready-to-run Windows 64-bit test archive
    - a ready-to-run Windows 32-bit test archive

Known blocker issues:

  - GTK+3 port is functional but not complete as some deprecated APIs
    are still being used.
  - Space invasion is still a work-in-progress.
  - Plug-ins API update is still a work-in-progress.
  - GIMP extensions are still a work-in-progress.
  - Multiple layer selection is still work-in-progress. Some issues are
    expected, and possibly even some crashes in code paths which were
    not updated yet.
  - No custom theme yet, in particular we want a neutral gray theme with
    light/dark variants, and a middle-gray theme too.
  - We probably want to revive a "Small" theme as well with smaller
    icons (useful on smaller displays, or mid-high density displays or
    simply depending on tastes).
  - Various blocking bugs happen on Wayland only.