| Chapter 2. Fire up the GIMP | ||
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 |
Part I. Getting started |  |
| Chapter 2. Fire up the GIMP | ||
|---|---|---|
| |
Part I. Getting started | |
Table of Contents
Most often, you start GIMP either by clicking on an icon (if your system is set up to provide you with one), or by typing gimp on a command line. If you have multiple versions of GIMP installed, you may need to type gimp-2.4 to get the latest version. You can, if you want, give a list of image files on the command line after the program name, and they will automatically be opened by GIMP as it starts. It is also possible, though, to open files from within GIMP once it is running.
In most operating systems, you can set things up so that various types of image files are “associated” with GIMP, and cause it to start automatically when icons for them are double-clicked.
The GIMP is the most widely supported image manipulation available today. The platforms that The GIMP is known to work on include:
GNU/Linux™, Apple Mac OS X™, Microsoft Windows™, OpenBSD™, NetBSD™, FreeBSD™, Solaris™, SunOS™, AIX™, HP-UX™, Tru64™, Digital UNIX™, OSF/1™, IRIX™, OS/2™ and BeOS™.
The GIMP can easily be ported to other operating systems because of its source code availability. For further information visit the GIMP developers homepage. [GIMP-DEV].
All being well, GIMP detects the system language. This may fail on some machines and you may want use another language. It is possible to change the language:
In LINUX: in console mode,
type LANGUAGE=en gimp or
LANG=en gimp
replacing en by fr, de, ... according to the language you
want. Background: By using LANGUAGE=en
you're setting an environment variable for the executed
program gimp here.
→ → → button in “System Variables” area: button: Enter LANG for Name and fr or de... for Value. Watch out! You have to click on three successive to validate your choice.
If you often change language, you can create a batch file. Open NotePad. Type the following commands (for french for instance):
set lang=fr
cd c:\Program Files\GIMP-2.0\bin
GIMP-2.4.exe
Save this file as GIMP-FR.BAT (or another name, but always with a .BAT extension). Create shortcut and drag it to your desktop.
Go to System Preferences, click on the International icon, and in the Language tab, the desired language should be the first in the list.
Ordinarily you don't need to give any arguments when starting
GIMP, but here is a list of some that may at one time or another be
useful. This is not a complete list; on Unix systems you can get
a complete list by running man gimp in a
terminal window.
To use the command line options, you have to put them in the command line which you use to start GIMP as gimp-2.4 [OPTION...] [FILE|URI...].
Display a list of all commandline options.
Show all help options.
Show GTK+ Options.
Print the version of GIMP being used, and exit.
Show license information and exit
Show detailed start-up messages.
Start a new GIMP instance.
Open images as new.
Run without a user interface.
Do not load patterns, gradients, palettes, or brushes. Often useful in non-interactive situations where start-up time is to be minimized.
Do not load any fonts. This option could be useful either for speeding up GIMP start-up for scripts that does not use fonts or to find malformed fonts related problems that could hang GIMP.
Do not show the splash screen while starting.
Do not use shared memory between GIMP and plugins.
Do not use special CPU acceleration functions. Useful for finding or disabling buggy accelerated hardware or functions.
name
Use a different sessionrc for this GIMP
session. The given session name is appended to the default
sessionrc filename.
filename
Use an alternative gimprc instead of the
default one. The gimprc file contains a
record of your preferences. Useful in cases where plugins paths
or machine specs may be different.
filename
Use an alternate system gimprc file
commands
Execute the set of commands non-interactively. The set of commands
is typically in the form of a script that can be executed by one
of the GIMP scripting extensions. When commands is
-, the commands are read from standard
input.
proc
The procedure to process batch commands with
Do not popup dialog boxes on errors or warnings. Print the messages on the console instead.
mode
PDB compatibility mode (off|on|warn).
mode
Debug in case of a crash (never|query|always)
Enable non-fatal debugging signal handlers. Useful for GIMP debugging.
Make all warnings fatal. Useful for debug.
Output a gimprc file with default settings. Useful if you messed up the gimprc file.
display
Use the designated X display (does not apply to all platforms).
