Re: POW: ImageMagick multipurpose graphic importer


Subject: Re: POW: ImageMagick multipurpose graphic importer
From: Joerg Baumann (Joerg.Baumann@stud.informatik.uni-erlangen.de)
Date: Thu Jul 26 2001 - 18:00:53 CDT


Hi,

this is my first post to this list. I wanted to start working on abiword
(so I can contribute just a little bit to your great work ;-) and I
thought the POW "ImageMagick multipurpose graphic importer" would be
a good start. But nearly a month ago David Blackman claimed that POW.
Since then there was no further mail from him on this list and he didnīt
answer my mail, wether he is still working on it.
So I would like to take over, but I have a few(?) questions left:

1) There are C++ bindings for ImageMagick, but they use exceptions, so I
   guess I canīt use them ;-)

2) Image magick expects an error handler for some conditions, which does
   not return. Calling exit() is probably no solution inside AbiWord,
   exceptions are banned. Using setjmp.h could be a portable solution, if
   there will be no forgotten resources (I didīnt check all cases yet).
   Any comments?

3) Shall I try to make localization of ImageMagick error messages possible
   (I donīt know how yet, but I have the feeling that it would get far
   from perfect and ugly). Perhaps just a "could not read the image" will
   be enough.

4) What would be a better solution?
   * One ie_impGraphic_ImageMagick which supports all image formats
     supported by ImageMagick and not by the other importers.

   * Having a base class ie_impGraphic_ImageMagick from which classes for
     the single formats are derived. (But this means, that when trying to
     recognize the image format of a file a lot of computing is doubled,
     because each derived importer will do the same check)

5) File names in ImageMagick canīt be longer than 2052 bytes. Is that a
   problem?

6) And copying Domīs remark from Davidīs mail?
   "Please don't anyone do this until after I actually code/check-in the
   new proposed imaging framework. Otherwise we'll have lots of duplicated
   code/effort."
   Was the new framework put into place?

7) Will ImageMagick be added to the abiword sources, so we could make
   changes to circumvent some of the above problems?
   There seems to be a stripped down version of it already within the
   wv sources.

Regards,
  joerg

  Joerg Baumann joerg.baumann@stud.informatik.uni-erlangen.de
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
  Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct,
  not tried it.
                  Don Knuth



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