IML - An Image Manipulation Language

Abstract

Several image manipulation tools support the use of at least one general scripting language (e.g., Python, JavaScript), for task automation. But, users of such tools usually do not have much experience or skill with these (or often any) programming languages, which represents a barrier for the use of such languages when automating a task. With this in mind, we present IML, a work-in-progress, domain-specific language designed for easy and clear image manipulation. Besides describing the basic constructs and operations of this language, we compared a simple IML program with equivalent implementations in the languages currently supported by the popular image manipulation tool GIMP. This illustrates how IML might make the image editing automation process simpler, easier to learn, and more straightforward.