(fifth RacketCon): Samuel Rebelsky — Scripting GIMP with Racket

The GNU Image Manipulation Program, or GIMP, is an open-source alternative to Photoshop. In the early days of GIMP, the designers added a scripting language, Script-Fu, based on Scheme. Over the years, Script-Fu has been superseded by Python-Fu, although Script-Fu remains an option, albeit with a primitive IDE. Over the past few years, my students and I have built a library that allows programmers to script GIMP using Racket and the DrRacket IDE. In addition to providing the “glue” between GIMP and Racket, we also added a library of routines more amenable to novice programmers. In this talk, we will discuss the design of both the “glue” and the broader library. We will also discuss a related introductory course in CS that uses multiple models of image making as the motivating problem domain.

Samuel A. Rebelsky is Professor and Chair of Computer Science at Grinnell College, a small liberal arts college in the middle of Iowa. Although he teaches courses at every level of the curriculum, Sam is particularly passionate about teaching at the introductory level, where he has developed a workshop-style curriculum that combines image making and functional programming in Racket. Sam’s research projects have included Web tools, software for functional image making, and a system for combining imperative and lazy functional languages.