GIMP for Windows
What is WinGIMP?
WinGIMP is a Windows-port of the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software suitable for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. This site contains information about downloading, installing, using, and enhancing the Windows version of the GIMP. This site also serves as a distribution point for value-added releases, tutorials, plugins, and scripts. The Linux/*BSD GIMP site is located at www.gimp.org and interested developers are urged to join the gimpwin-dev mailing list.
The Situation with the GIF Patent
Unisys's official statement is here: lpf.ai.mit.edu/Patents/Gif/unisys.html.
The relevant part for open source projects such as WinGIMP is the following:
Unisys does not require licensing, or fees to be paid, for non-commercial, non-profit GIF-based applications, including those for use on the on-line services.
If you will be using the GIF editing ability of WinGIMP for a commercial purpose, however, then you need to obtain permission from Unisys for use of the LZW compression algorithm in it.
Available Online Support Resources
Aside from the WinGIMP discussion forums you can join either the user and developer mailing lists and ask questions there. You can also ask for help on the #wingimp channel of the irc.gimp.net IRC server, or you can file bug reports and feature requests in BugZilla.
However, since support is also provided on a volunteer basis, you must be careful not to have unreasonable expectations: you cannot demand your questions to be answered or bugs to be fixed. There are few things more annoying than someone telling you to address this or that issue before noon tomorrow. Like most other people: we prefer to please those who appreciate our efforts! In short: the people volunteering time to GIMP only have so much time available, and they alone decide how to spend it.
When that is said, you should know that the discussion forums, mailing list and the IRC channel are friendly places - few requests go without reply. And we also do our best to fix all bugs reported, just as we strive to implement requested features. But as should be evident from the number of open bugs in BugZilla, there's not enough hours in the day to allow us to address all issues in a timely manner.
The Windows version is GIMP 1.2.2. The base GIMP code should be
relatively bug-free. The Windows code without doubt has bugs,
though.
Translation Notes and International Issues
GTK+ for Windows uses Unicode internally. It is possible to
input text in several alphabets into GTK+ widgets by switching the
Windows input locale. (You can enable several keyboard languages in
the Control Panel's Keyboard applet, and switch between them with the
button on the taskbar, or a hotkey, usually Left Alt+Shift.)
This also works for Chinese, Japanese and Korean (CJK) input
locales, including the IMEs (input method environments) of these
languages. (On Win9x you must have the Chinese/Japanese/Korean support
and/or the MS Global IME installed. For Win98 these are available from
Windows Update under the disguise of CJK support for IE and Outlook
Express. This also installs the necessary fonts.)
As GTK+ uses Unicode, strings output by GTK+ can contain any
Unicode character. For this to work you must have an appropriate font
set in use for the widget. The font set must have fonts that contain
those Unicode subranges you intend to output.
All strings you pass to GTK+ functions must be in UTF-8. You can
not just use non-ASCII characters from some Windows single- or
multi-byte codepage. To convert text from some Windows codepage to
UTF-8, it's easiest to use the g_convert function in GLib. For
example:
utf8 = g_convert (string, strlen (string),
"UTF-8", "CP932",
NULL, NULL, NULL);
to convert from codepage 932 to UTF-8. Remember to free the resulting string
with g_free when you don't need it any longer.
The GIMP includes message catalogs for several languages. It
automatically uses the catalog for the locale chosen in the Control
Panel's Regional Settings, if available.
Note that many of the translations are not complete by a long shot,
much text is still only available in English. If you prefer to have
just English messages, set the environment variable LANG to "C" before
running the GIMP. (This will in no way restrict the characters you can
input, or that GTK+ and the GIMP can output.) You can also simply
leave the localisation out when running the installer.
Printing with the GIMP on Windows
The GIMP's print plug-in only prints the active
layer, so make sure to flatten the image before printing in
its natural size. To adjust the size of the image on paper
use the Image:Scale:Print Size & Display Unit dialog. (This
doesn't change the image pixels in any way, just its logical size.)
In order to look at an image on the monitor at its natural size,
measure your monitor's size, set the pixels-per-inch (or
pixels-per-millimeter) value in the File:Preferences:Monitor dialog,
and uncheck the Dot-for-dot entry in the image's View menu.
