Beginner coding tasks in Krita: easy and short feature requests, ready to implement

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Some of you might think of your own grand new great feature for Krita, and maybe even you know how to code, but getting into Krita codebase is difficult. Or maybe you’re bored and want to help, but don’t have much time. Or maybe you want to switch industry you’re working in and you’re learning programming in spare time.

Krita’s codebase might seem overwhelming, and frankly, it is. But we can always cut the beast into pieces and just take care of a very very little part of it. I was working recently on rating wishes - feature requests reported on bugzilla - to see how many of them are invalid, how many needs more discussion, how many are difficult, how many are not. Below it’s what I rated as “short, easy, ready”. I put a lot of items so you can choose what feels the most interesting to you :slight_smile:

NOTE: If you become interested in one of those items, please do contact one of the developers (or comment here/below), that way (1) we can help you, (2) there won’t be multiple people working on the same thing. Also this list is for people who already know c++ and can read code; otherwise it might be quite difficult.

Usability

(improvements, new features)

Tools/features

GUI

Scripting

More

You can see more suitable wishes to implement here, but please remember to first ask if it’s a suitable task first here or on IRC: BeginnersTasks.md · master · Agata Cacko / Reports Manager · GitLab (I tried to make sure all of the wishes and issues there are suitable, but sometimes the situation changes or my estimation changes etc.).

Bugs

If you don’t look for fun but want to make the biggest impact with your coding, you can try to fix one of the following bugs. They are all meant to be somewhat easy to fix and shouldn’t take much time (although it’s a relative measure…). They might be a little more difficult than wishes though, since you’re not writing a new code, but fixing the old one.

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Krita UI Redesign
How can I support Krita?
Animation: Add hold frames based on image sequence number
feather selections.
Layer's default name should reflect their type
List of plugins for the Plugins category
Open of multiple files is Unordered
Would be nice if wrap around mode could be restricted to just X or Y axis
Creating a custom version of Krita / UI redesign
Specific Color Selector - color preview idea
Newspaper plugin for halftoning
Krita Monthly Update – Edition 12
Is a Brush Smoothing hotkey for multibrush possible?
Introduce yourself! 🎙️
Ask for a talk about krita
Introduce yourself! 🎙️
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Hi

I’ve added this post to my bookmarks… it’s interesting to know which bug/features are accessible for a newbie

Not sure to have the time now to take a look about this: I already started to take a look to source code, and for now it’s a little bit too much for me :sweat_smile:

I already have some developer’s skills, coded with Basic (in 80’s :sweat_smile:), TurboPascal (90’s), Delphi (90’s), PHP, Python, Powershell, Java, Javascript…
But I’m a real beginner with C++ and it will take some time to learn C++, Krita’s classes and architecture, Qt… Use of CMake and Git (I’m used to use SVN but git for now, I’m currently not able to push to my Krita’s fork on invent.kde.org :blush:)

So I’m currently working on some plugin(s) and then slowy but surely learning PyQt and PyKrita’s API
This is the simplest and funniest way to start and contribute to the project I think :wink:

In few months (objective: before end of year) I hope to be able to take a look on ‘simple’ things listed here :grimacing:
And there’s some bugs with PyKrita API that I hope to be able to fix one day too :slight_smile:

Grum999

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Newspaper plugin for halftoning
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Thanks for the post @tiar. I’ll be happy to help but actually, i’m on Windows 10. I’ve made a dual boot with a kubuntu 19.10 since Deevad said they have integrated tablet gui… but having problems affecting the button of my Huion tablet (and some other problems with dual screen for exemple) and as i’m not fully confortable with linux for now (i’m waiting the kubuntu 20 release to make another try) i’m using Windows. Is there a documentation to help me compile sources and make modifications in Krita from my Windows, i tried but was discourage with the use of Python to use cmake and qt and the lack of clear documentation to do this (a documentation like the one for linux would be great)?

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Truth is, development on Windows is much more difficult than on Linux, so most developers develop on Linux as a choice. I have this little guide: Windows Krita Development – Outside of infinity (no Carrot images though :frowning: ) which might be helpful for you, it has all the scripts so you don’t have to do anything except for downloading correct things and then running scripts. But it’s still more difficult than on Linux.

If you have any trouble, please just say so :slight_smile:

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thanks i’ll have a look at it :wink:

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Also having a look at this document. Krita is actually much more feature complete than other free software I’ve seen and worked with (and I definitely did experimentation), so I’d love to contribute to it. I think there are more Windows developers out here in 2020 that want to get onboard, but we need the ability to do so. Only then can we get a healthy group of developers on Windows, which also helps keep builds stable on it, so thanks for the guide. I’ll be testing that out shortly.

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Oh you definitely can develop on Windows :slight_smile: It’s just that setting things up takes much more time than on Linux and it’s more tricky and that, I believe, comes from the quirks of the system itself and how complex Krita is (and because it uses cmake, possibly? and some libraries, like Vc, are really picky…). But when you have the environment set up, then it’s very similar, of course.

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Hey tiar, if I encounter problems or have suggestions for the guide, I’ll comment on it there so it can serve to help everyone seeing the same guide. I’ve added a comment now (awaiting your approval); if you monitor Outside of Infinity for comments, I’ll continue to comment on it there.

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If you could come over to our IRC channel it would be better.

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Animation Export Resolution
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Just commenting to say that I’m taking care of 349152 https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=349152

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For the sake of keeping readers and commentors informed, dibs on this one also:

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I’ll give this one a shot: 399058 – Convert the current layer into a reference image (kde.org)

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Go for it! If you have questions, please join the irc channel.

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These two are claimed, but I think the work is stalled or the authors are busy. @QChai are you still working on the second one? I think we can release these or any others that are claimed, if the authors are not working on it any more.

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Okay, I just read that save group layers dimension is not retained. If anyone is up to that task, I would like a option for it not to be retained. I use it for game texture purpose.

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Hi, I’d like to work on import sequence hold frames task . Can I claim it?

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Sure! I’ll mark the task as yours.

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@QChai Hi! Are you still working on 349152 – When transforming a clone layer with transform tool, create a transformation mask automatically ? Can I unassign it so others can work on them, or you’d prefer to still keep it assigned to you?

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Hi Tiar,

Thanks for making this list! Can I claim the Resize for grid brush should affect the brush area request?

1 Like