プラグインがあるおかげで手軽に機能拡張できるところは GIMP の最大の魅力のひとつといえます。 プラグインは外部プログラムでありながら GIMP の中枢アプリケーションの制御下で動作し、 両者は緊密に相互作用します。 ユーザーが[手で]行う画像操作はほとんど何でもプラグインで実行できます。 ちょっとばかりプラグインのコードを書けば、 GIMP 中枢部の膨大な量の複雑なコードに手をつけることなく、 簡単に機能を GIMP に追加できるところが強みです。 現に価値あるプラグインの大多数はほぼ 100 行から 200 行の C 言語ソースだけでできています。
Several dozen plugins are included in the main GIMP distribution, and installed automatically along with GIMP. Most of them can be accessed through the
menu (in fact, everything in that menu is a plugin), but a number are located in other menus. In many cases you can use one without ever realizing that it is a plugin: for example, the "Normalize" function for automatic color correction is actually a plugin, although there is nothing about the way it works that would tell you this. Even importing and exporting of images is done by plugins.Everyone can write a GIMP plugin and make it available online. There are many useful plugins that can be obtained this way. Some of them are described elsewhere in the User's Manual.
With this free availability comes a certain degree of risk. The fact that anyone can release plugins means that there is no effective quality control. The plugins distributed with GIMP have all been tested and tuned by the developers. Additional plugins available online, may have been hacked together in a few hours and then abandoned. Some plugin creators don't care about robustness, and even for those who do, their ability to test on a variety of systems in a variety of situations is often quite limited. Basically, when you download a plugin, you are getting something for free, and sometimes you get exactly what you pay for. This is not to discourage you, just to make sure you understand that not all plugins available online will deliver what you expect from them.
警告 | |
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Plugins, being full-fledged executable programs, can do all of the things that any other program can do. This includes installing back-doors on your system or otherwise compromise its security. Don't install a plugin unless it comes from a trusted source. |
注記 | |
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Plugins written for a certain version of GIMP may not always work well in other versions. Though in general the GIMP team tries to minimize changes that affect plugins. Usually the only time you can expect serious problems with plugins, is when the major version of GIMP changes. When a plugin made for an older version doesn't work correctly anymore, it needs to be ported. Sometimes this is easy, sometimes not. Bottom line: before trying to install a plugin, make sure that it is compatible with your version of GIMP. |
だいたいいつもはプラグインだと意識せずとも他の GIMP ツールと同じように使えます。 しかし僅かですが理解しておくと便利な事柄があります。
One is that plugins are generally not as robust as the GIMP core. When GIMP crashes, it is considered a very serious thing: it can cost the user a lot of trouble and headache. When a plugin crashes, the consequences are usually not as serious. In most cases you can continue working without worrying about it too much.
注記 | |
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Because plugins are separate programs, they communicate with GIMP in a special way: The GIMP developers call it 「talking over a wire」. When a plugin crashes, the communication breaks down, and you may see an error message about a 「wire read error」. |
ヒント | |
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プラグインが異常終了すると GIMP はあたかもそのプラグインで壊れてしまったかのように言い、 画像を保存して一旦終了するように促す非常に気味の悪いメッセージを出します。 厳密な意味では、 プラグインには GIMP のほぼすべてを改変する能力があるのでこの指摘は決して間違いではありませんが、 実際的な面でみるとそういった破壊が起きた経験は事実上ほとんど無く、 気にせずそのまま作業を続ける人が大勢です。 私たちが申し上げたいのは、 何か問題が発生したときにどの程度の影響がご自身に及ぶかをちょっと考えて被害を推し量っていただきたいということです。 |
Because of the way plugins communicate with GIMP, they do not have any mechanism for being informed about changes you make to an image after the plugin has been started. If you start a plugin, and then alter the image using some other tool, the plugin may crash. Even if it doesn't, doing this may cause incorrect results. You should avoid running more than one plugin at a time on an image, and avoid doing anything to the image until the plugin has finished working on it. If you ignore this advice, not only could you screw up the image, you may also screw up the undo system, so that you won't be able to recover from your mistake.
The plugins that are distributed with GIMP don't
require installation. Plugins that you download yourself do.
Usually the default location is in GIMP's user
directory in a folder under /plug-ins
, where the
folder name needs to be the same as the plugin filename.
You can find the default locations where GIMP searches
for plugins in GIMP's folder preferences. There you
can also add new locations where GIMP should look
for plug-ins.
There are several scenarios, depending on what OS you are using and how
the plugin is structured.
大多数のプラグインは 2 つに分類できます。 片や配布されるソースコードがたったひとつの .c
ファイルだけのものと、 対して Makefile
を含め複数のファイルを収めたディレクトリーからなる配布形態をとる大きなものです。
For a simple one-file plugin, call it borker.c
,
installing it is just a matter of running the command
gimptool-2.0 --install borker.c. This command
compiles the plugin and installs it in your personal plugin directory,
~/gimp-2.10/plug-ins
unless you have changed it.
This will cause it to be loaded automatically the next time you start
GIMP. You don't need to be root to do these things;
in fact, you shouldn't be. If the plugin fails to compile, well, be
creative.
Most GIMP plugins available on Windows supply either an installer, or can be downloaded in a pre-compiled binary format ready to copy to a folder of your choice that is recognized by GIMP.
If an installer is available, that should do all the work for you selecting an appropriate folder and copying all relevant files. If not, you may have to check in GIMP's folder preferences where the plugins should be copied to. Remember, each plugin needs to be in its own folder with the same name as the plugin.
How you install plugins on OS X mostly depends on how you installed GIMP itself. If you were one of the brave and installed GIMP through one of the package managers like fink [FINK] or darwinports [DARWINPORTS], the plugin installation works exactly the way it is described for the Linux platform already. The only difference is, that a couple of plugins might be even available in the repository of your package manager, so give it a try.
If, on the other hand, you prefer to grab a prebuilt GIMP package like GIMP.app, you most likely want to a prebuilt plugin too. You can try to get a prebuilt version of the plugin of your dreams from the author of the plugin. Building your own binaries unfortunately involves installing GIMP.
Once you have installed the plugin, how do you activate it? The menu path is determined by the plugin itself, so to answer this you need to either look at the documentation for the plugin (if there is any), explore the menus, or use GIMP's command search function by pressing / and then entering the name of the plugin. If you know how to read source code you could also check that to see in what menu it registers itself.
For more complex plugins, organized as a directory with multiple
files, there usually is a file inside called either
INSTALL
or README
, with
instructions. If not, the best advice is to toss the plugin in the
trash and spend your time on something else: any code written with so
little concern for the user is likely to be frustrating in myriad
ways.
If you install a plugin in your personal plugin directory that has the same name as one in the system plugin directory, only one can be loaded, and it will be the one in your home directory. You will receive messages telling you this each time you start GIMP. This is probably a situation best avoided.
プラグインの書き方を学ぶ際に GIMP の開発者用ウェブサイト [GIMP-DEV-PLUGIN] (英語) をご覧になれば豊富な手掛かりがつかめます。 GIMP は複雑なプログラムですが、 開発チームはプラグインが書けるまでに学ぶべきことの壁ができるだけなだらかになるように奮闘しています。 既に優れたてびきや例がありますし、 プラグインが GIMP と交信するためのライブラリー (「libgimp」という) には十分に文書化された API があります。 既にあるプログラムを改変するところから学ぶ優れたプログラマーなら、 ほんの一両日中のうちに何か面白いことができてしまう場合が少なくありません。