Every time I visit the plug-in registry I see the opening page telling me the site is undergoing a rebuild. It always worries me because it seems likely that one day the site will simply disappear. That would be a huge loss to the community. So I decided to take action to prevent calamity.

I scripted some basic bash commands to retrieve all the scripts housed on the registry. I got 1,583 scripts. I put them in both .zip and .iso archives and added them to Dropbox;
Here's the zip
Here's the iso

This may not be much use for installing the scripts. I didn't retrieve any documentation other than what may be included with scripts that were already in an archive format. The only way to find out what a script does is to install it and see. Unless the name is clear enough. And I got every version of each script that was hosted. There may be multiple versions of many of the scripts rather than just the most recent. I may also have missed some scripts. I searched for specific file extensions, namely; .scm, .zip, .tar, .bz2, .py, .gz, and .txt. I also didn't follow any links off-site. So there are quite a few scripts with pages on the registry that are not in this archive. This is mainly because following the off-site links would have required investigating each off-site host to figure out how to retrieve the scripts. Since I don't know where all those hosts are this would have been quite difficult to sort out. Also, I figure the scripts hosted elsewhere are mostly on larger, more stable sites and are therefore less likely to evaporate. If you're looking for a script to do something specific you will probably be better served by visiting the registry so you can read what the script is supposed to do.

The main motivation here was just to protect the work of the numerous script authors and to make sure these filters stay available to the community. Now these scripts can be spread across multiple hosts and retrieved very easily. The .iso makes it possible to make hard copies for even greater insurance.

It may also be possible that script writers can use the archive as inspiration for filters they hadn't thought of or maybe to improve the function of existing filters. It may be that authors might even see their own work they had forgotten and resurrect it.

I should also point out that I have done no editing of any kind to the scripts in this archive. The names and content of the filters are exactly as you would get if you downloaded them individually.

I hope this is helpful to folks.

The registry contents won't be lost... but a lot of it will become obsolete with future versions of Gimp.

There are talks to have a "script store" built into Gimp (in V3).

Maybe the archive will still have a purpose then. It might be easier to port some of the old scripts to the newer Gimp rather than writing all new scripts. Also, folks who don't upgrade Gimp may find it hard to locate scripts for the old version.

Even if it's completely useless, it was still a fun exercise creating this archive.

I downloaded the script archive and I noticed that some of the files have the .txt extension. With those files, do we have to convert them into working plugins/scripts? If so, how is that done and do all of these scripts/plugins work with gimp 2.8.18?

Usually, the .txt extension is just there to make the file easier to open and move. If you notice, those files almost always have ".py" or maybe ".scm" immediately before the ".txt". All you have to do is rename the file by removing the ".txt" and it will work just like a regular ".py" or whatever.

If they are just ".txt" with no additional extension then you need to open them in a text editor and save them in whatever format they are written in. It is common for ".sh" scripts to be passed around as ".txt" files so they don't accidentally get executed. I have seen other formats used this way as well, I think python scripts can be saved as ".txt".

Oh, okay. Do all of these scripts/plugins work with gimp 2.8.18? What I meant was that some of the .py files aren't .py files at all, but they are text documents with the file extension .txt Do those files need to be converted in order to work in gimp 2.8.18?

I have no idea. All I did was gather them. My guess is that there are plenty that don't work with 2.8.18... and probably plenty that don't work at all.

I am still using Ubuntu 14.04 and its software center doesnot install the most current vesion of gimp. So old versions of scripts may be useful in some cases. Moreover, If someone has windows and he likes some particular script he may install the old version of the gimp for that particular script. Computer programs are not easy to write. Great job.

Sasquatch,

Thank You for taking the time to gather all these scripts & then
incorporating them into a zip file.

This sort of gratuitous practice is to be commended.

In my opinion it is better to be prepared for any unforeseen
occurrence than to assume that something will always be accessible.

Might be kind of fun to go thru these and see if any are in need of resurrection.
Thanks for the consideration.

I noticed that some of the scripts already had as many as five or six versions. So there's probably plenty of room for tweaking.

I might have to see if there's a way to sort out the OS-specific scripts. That would be rather helpful. But it wouldn't be a simple task. At least, not simple enough for me to think of it right now.

If you are on 14.04 add Otto Kesselgulash's PPA to your software sources. You'll have up-to-date gimp, and gimp-plugin-registry packages.

There are a lot of scripts and plugins in the zipped script archive How can we tell if the versions are recent, compatible, and working? Also, I guess the plugins with the.txt extensions will have to be manually converted in order for them to work and there are a lot of those.

The only way to tell if they will work is to install them. Which is no different than if you had downloaded them yourself.

Yes, it would be quite a bit of work changing all the .txt files to .py or .scm or whatever. That's why I didn't bother. I just wanted to archive the material.

You're kidding, right?

In a Unix command prompt:

Shhhh... don't tell people how easy it is to tinker in bash. I know I could write a little script that piped 'ls' to 'grep' to find the appropriate files and remove the .txt extension. Although I would probably use 'sed' since I don't know if my system has 'rename'... that's a Perl program apparently. I could also unzip them, sort them by extension, and add like extensions to their own folders. But my goal was never to do anything more than simply archive the scripts.

'rename' is likely in your distro's repository. Of course you can instead use mv+sed, but rename has a rather useful 'test' option. Going though your console log to find which file was renamed to '[^*][{4}.txt' is never a pleasant experience, especially when you are in a hurry.

That's a huge part of the reason I didn't mess with the scripts. I know how easy it is for one small goof to create a huge mess. I just didn't see any reason to worry about it. Anyone who wants to use the scripts would have to rename them anyhow even if they had gotten them straight from the registry.

If anything, I would like to create a script that renamed the files to match their menu names. That would be useful for future downloads as well. I have an idea as to how to approach that. But I have several other projects before that.