Subject: Re: JPEG import
From: Thomas Fletcher (thomasf@qnx.com)
Date: Thu Apr 19 2001 - 07:14:21 CDT
[Much discussion about ImageMagick snipped]
I think that it is important to realize that ImageMagick
is not a straight replacement for having our png/jpeg
libraries, it provides a standard interface which we can
use for manipulating images. Last time I checked IM required
a large number of "helper libs" (such as libjpeg, libpng,
zlib etc) in order to actually do the translation of image
types.
The proposal of a miniIM would be to trim out the excessive
functionality that AW doesn't need, which includes those
image formats we don't want to support natively. I agree
that we need to have some scheme to take advantage of locally
available API's where possible, but one would hope that
all it would take would be a bit of work to create a miniIM
module that would use the local system resources instead
of the "helper libraries".
Of course this all stems from my experience with IM which
is a couple of years old now so things may have changed.
I don't think that anyone is arguing that we shouldn't use
the native imaging interface where it is possible, it is
simply a question of how can we integrate various platform
imaging interfaces in an XP style (ie use IM API across the
board) while still providing the same functionality across
the board platformwise (ie use native interface for IM where
possible, otherwise use the modules provided by IM). Since
we are talking about a reduced subset of guaranteed image
support (right now PNG, JPEG, BMP? and SVG for the future)
this shouldn't be too arduous a task.
Thomas ... talk is cheap, show me the code ... Fletcher
-------------------------------------------------------------
Thomas (toe-mah) Fletcher QNX Software Systems
thomasf@qnx.com Neutrino Development Group
(613)-591-0931 http://www.qnx.com/~thomasf
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