[rdfweb-dev] IMP schema thoughts

[bryce benton]

Hi folks,

Inspired by some work that masaka[1] did last month and a short round of 
questions/comments, I'm looking into the possibility of creating an 
image manipulation schema. This schema would be useful for annotating 
the path from an original digital image to its exported Web version.

For example,
The image is captured with a digital camera
Image opened in graphics editor (original image name)
Brightness adjusted (+10)
Cropped (new width, new height, offset x, offset y)
Scaled (new width, new height)
Exported to jpeg (quality=93, smoothing=0)

The first step was to do some research to discover if there are already 
standard ways of referring to various image manipulation functions, and 
the number and types of parameters they each take. Fortunately, the GIMP 
has all of its functions both accessible and clearly documented. To 
browse these functions, select:

(GIMP 1.3+) Xtns - Python-Fu - PDB Browser
or
Xtns - Script-Fu - Console... - Browse...

Initially, the RDF image manipulation annotations would be helpful for 
manually stepping through the functions from the original image to 
exported/modified version. The annotations could also be transformed 
into a plugin (using language of choice: Python, Perl, Scheme, 
FutureLanguageFoo) that would allow the GIMP (or some other IMP) to 
perform all or some of the steps automatically.

The development version of the GIMP is currently at 2.0pre4, and I've 
heard rumors that it should be released as 2.0 stable very soon. This 
might be a good time to "freeze" the PDB (procedural database) and 
pilfer it in order to create an image manipulation schema. I don't know 
what are the pros and cons of doing something like this: basically to 
abstract a programming language (or subset of one) into RDF.

Alternatively, it may be more manageable to use only the most popular 
functions. I generally only use rotate, levels, brightness/contrast, 
hue/saturation, crop, scale, export anyway.

Any thoughts or advice on this?

-bryce

[1] http://rdfweb.org/pipermail/rdfweb-dev/2004-February/012748.html and 
subsequent 3 or 4 messages