[Fwd: TinyScheme and GIMP]
Subject: TinyScheme and GIMP
Date: Mon, 06 Aug 2007 09:26:36 -0700
On the Inkscape project we received a patch from the folks at Glimmer labs
which adds Scheme functionality. It uses the TinyScheme interpreter which
looks like it's also being used by GIMP. From what I can tell, it seems
that GIMP is including TinyScheme in the source tree.
The Script-Fu plug-in of GIMP allows the use of scripts written in Scheme. It
has been part of a standard installation of GIMP for a long time. The latest
version of the Script-Fu plug-in uses the TinyScheme interpreter.
Do you expect TinyScheme to be an external library at some point? If we
were using it in Inkscape also, would that change the answer?
There are no plans to move the plug-in or the TinyScheme interpreter out of
the main GIMP source tree. I am considering creating a "version 2" of
Script-Fu which would work in a fashion similar to that of the Perl, Python,
and Ruby scripting plug-ins.
The TinyScheme interpreter would be a standalone program like Perl, and Python
(etc.). To run a Scheme based script GIMP would start TinyScheme which would
pull in a run-time loadable module(s) which would provide the hooks to GIMP.
I already started looking in to this some time ago. I stopped working on it
after a while as Script-Fu was still under going some changes and cleanup. I
didn't want to maintain multiple copies of a Script-Fu tree. Sometime after
GIMP 2.4 is released I will resume working on it.
Not quite the external library solution you have in mind. It would make it
easy for you to grab the TinyScheme source and use it without modification.
You would only need your own extension to handle the hooks in to Inkscape.
Is your TinyScheme patched for UTF-8?
Yes.
