Edit images

Edit images

[Lennart Borgman (gmail)]

It would be very good if there in image-mode where some key/menu binding 
for editing the image in an external application.

Re: Edit images

[David Kastrup]

"Lennart Borgman (gmail)" <lennart.borgman@gmail.com> writes:

> It would be very good if there in image-mode where some key/menu
> binding for editing the image in an external application.

What would the use case be?

When one is browsing through images, one is presumably using a tool
that already allows calling applications with the file name.

Anyway, pointless before the release.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

Re: Edit images

[Mathias Dahl]

> > It would be very good if there in image-mode where some key/menu
> > binding for editing the image in an external application.
>
> What would the use case be?

Are you serious?

I am browsing images in Emacs, using Dired maybe. I happen to stumble
upon an image. While in image-mode I decide I want to edit the image
for whatever reason. Voila, your use case! :)

I did never add support for editing when I made Tumme, mostly because
I did not have that need back then (my primary need was to categorize my
photos), but when thinking about it, this seems like a perfect for for a little
`e' command for both tumme' modes.

> When one is browsing through images, one is presumably using a tool
> that already allows calling applications with the file name.

Of course, one could argue that in both cases above, using "naked" Dired
functions ot Tumme, that the user only has to switch back to Dired to
start the app he wants to, but I find that less conventient than to have
a special command for it in the image buffer. Also, it should be extremely
easy to implement.

Anyway, probably nothing worth postponing the release for.

Re: Edit images

[David Kastrup]

"Mathias Dahl" <mathias.dahl@gmail.com> writes:

>> > It would be very good if there in image-mode where some key/menu
>> > binding for editing the image in an external application.
>>
>> What would the use case be?
>
> Are you serious?
>
> I am browsing images in Emacs, using Dired maybe. I happen to
> stumble upon an image. While in image-mode I decide I want to edit
> the image for whatever reason. Voila, your use case! :)

Then I delete the buffer, returning to my browser, and start editing
the image from there.

Starting the editor from the image buffer would be quite inconvenient
since then I would get an inconsistency between displayed buffer and
file on disk, requiring me to fiddle with revert-buffer and similar
stuff.

It would be also quite unusual if I called an image _editor_ that I
would require to display the image _afterwards_ again with Emacs.
Most image editors should be better at displaying an image than Emacs.

So killing the buffer would be a natural thing to do, anyway.
Postponing that until after the image edit is just asking for trouble.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

Re: Edit images

[Lennart Borgman (gmail)]

David Kastrup wrote:

>> I am browsing images in Emacs, using Dired maybe. I happen to
>> stumble upon an image. While in image-mode I decide I want to edit
>> the image for whatever reason. Voila, your use case! :)
> 
> Then I delete the buffer, returning to my browser, and start editing
> the image from there.
> 
> Starting the editor from the image buffer would be quite inconvenient
> since then I would get an inconsistency between displayed buffer and
> file on disk, requiring me to fiddle with revert-buffer and similar
> stuff.
> 
> It would be also quite unusual if I called an image _editor_ that I
> would require to display the image _afterwards_ again with Emacs.
> Most image editors should be better at displaying an image than Emacs.
> 
> So killing the buffer would be a natural thing to do, anyway.
> Postponing that until after the image edit is just asking for trouble.


Would it not be good to have a command that did the equivalent of this?

Re: Edit images

[Mathias Dahl]

> Starting the editor from the image buffer would be quite inconvenient
> since then I would get an inconsistency between displayed buffer and
> file on disk, requiring me to fiddle with revert-buffer and similar
> stuff.

True, you would get inconsistency. But if that is a real problem or
not depends on if you care about seeing the result in Emacs afterwards
or not. You might have used Emacs just to find that particular image
that you wanted to edit. I know I do that kind adhoc work a lot.

> It would be also quite unusual if I called an image _editor_ that I
> would require to display the image _afterwards_ again with Emacs.
> Most image editors should be better at displaying an image than Emacs.

Sorry, but I don't follow what this has to do with what Lennart
wanted; a quick-access command to fire up his image editor of choice.
Can it be quicker and more painless than asking Emacs to do it when
that image is on his screen?

> Postponing that until after the image edit is just asking for trouble.

Seems we have very different views about what "trouble" is... :)

I have no problem seeing the usefulness of the feature Lennart asks
for, but if it is a crucial feature or not, I cannot say. I guess it
depends on the user. However, a user that knows about keyboard macros
could quickly cook together such a command without knowing anything
about emacs lisp.

Actually, keyboard macros is one of the coolest things about Emacs,
that you can create new "commands" just like that. I think that was
the feature that got me sold back in those days. All other text
editors that I had tried had some kinds of limitation when doing macro
recording, for example dialog boxes often break the macro recording
and you could not use a cut'n'pasted piece of text in the search
dialog or whatever. Ah, those were the days... :)

Re: Edit images

[Lennart Borgman (gmail)]

David Kastrup wrote:
> "Lennart Borgman (gmail)" <lennart.borgman@gmail.com> writes:
> 
>> It would be very good if there in image-mode where some key/menu
>> binding for editing the image in an external application.
> 
> What would the use case be?
> 
> When one is browsing through images, one is presumably using a tool
> that already allows calling applications with the file name.
> 
> Anyway, pointless before the release.


Well, I can do a lot with images in dired. And maybe that is good. I can 
use ediff on them for example. ;-)

There is a bit of consistency and usefulness missing about images. Maybe 
it would be good to distinguish between "viewing" and "editing" in an 
external program?

And there is a small bug in this area in tumme.el. It does not check if 
tumme-external-viewer is nil in tumme-dired-display-external.

We can of course save this for after the release.

Re: Edit images

[Jay Belanger]

"Lennart Borgman (gmail)" <lennart.borgman@gmail.com> writes:

> It would be very good if there in image-mode where some key/menu binding
> for editing the image in an external application.

Well, for editing the image in an internal application (sort of),
there's eimp.el, which looks pretty neat (although I've never gotten
it to work).

Jay