NAME

Gimp::Net - Communication module for the gimp-perl server.

SYNOPSIS

  use Gimp;

DESCRIPTION

For Gimp::Net (and thus commandline and remote scripts) to work, you first have to install the ``Perl-Server'' extension somewhere where Gimp can find it (e.g in your .gimp/plug-ins/ directory). Usually this is done automatically while installing the Gimp extension. If you have a menu entry <Xtns/Perl-Server> then it is probably installed.

The Perl-Server can either be started from the <Xtns> menu in Gimp, or automatically when a perl script can't find a running Perl-Server.

When started from within The Gimp, the Perl-Server will create a unix domain socket to which local clients can connect. If an authorization password is given to the Perl-Server (by defining the environment variable GIMP_HOST before starting The Gimp), it will also listen on a tcp port (default 10009). Since the password is transmitted in cleartext, using the Perl-Server over tcp effectively lowers the security of your network to the level of telnet. Even worse: the current Gimp::Net-protocol can be used for denial of service attacks, i.e. crashing the Perl-Server. There also *might* be buffer-overflows (although I do care a lot for these).

ENVIRONMENT

The environment variable GIMP_HOST specifies the default server to contact and/or the password to use. The syntax is [auth@][tcp/]hostname[:port] for tcp, [auth@]unix/local/socket/path for unix and spawn/ for a private gimp instance. Examples are:

 www.yahoo.com               # just kidding ;)
 yahoo.com:11100             # non-standard port
 tcp/yahoo.com               # make sure it uses tcp
 authorize@tcp/yahoo.com:123 # full-fledged specification


 unix/tmp/unx                # use unix domain socket
 password@unix/tmp/test      # additionally use a password

 authorize@                  # specify authorization only

 spawn/                      # use a private gimp instance
 spawn/nodata                # pass --no-data switch
 spawn/gui                   # don't pass -n switch

CALLBACKS

net()
is called after we have succesfully connected to the server. Do your dirty work in this function, or see the Gimp::Fu manpage for a better solution.

FUNCTIONS

server_quit()
sends the perl server a quit command.

get_connection()
return a connection id which uniquely identifies the current connection.

set_connection(conn_id)
set the connection to use on subsequent commands. conn_id is the connection id as returned by get_connection().

BUGS

(Ver 0.04) This module is much faster than it ought to be... Silly that I wondered wether I should implement it in perl or C, since perl is soo fast.

AUTHOR

Marc Lehmann <pcg@goof.com>

SEE ALSO

perl(1), the Gimp manpage.