Well, I never was in love with GIMP calling them "filters" anyways.
But, now its the word i use for it, "filter".
I assume you have seen "ALPHA TO LOGO" set of filters in GIMP?
some versions have the alpha to logo filter collection, some dont.
anyways, from your description of your "particle trace" routine...
I had the idea of... someone else makes a "different filter" and it gets added to a list...
a routine for editing TEXT and controlling text attributes...
and BING, we would have a "alpha to logo" little IDE going on. We could slowly assemble extra filters, as people took it upon themselves to write a new filter...
In GIMP? I can only do ONE alpha-to-logo FILTER at all... if i want to go and do a "frozen" over top of the "sparkle" filter? It undoes it, and re-does the new one... I want to run BOTH one after the other...
the whole thing SOUNDS way more complicated than it actually is.
(if YOU dont want to play with this idea? i will try it in my spare time)