Re: [Freeciv-Dev] xpm, gif, png & map view!

[Stephen Hodge <stephenh@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Mitch Davis wrote:
> Stephen Hodge wrote:
> > Aren't we trying to aim at more than just UNIX/X systems? I think png would
> > be a better choice.
> 
> In an ideal world, yes.  But not everyone has PNG libraries
> on their system.

Surely there are some fairly common PNG libraries around by now. Many
programs support it (Web browsers, Word, etc).

> People on non-Linux platforms have a hard enough time trying to
> get Xpm and Xaw together without worrying about another library,
> which is far less standard or ubiquitous than Xpm and Xaw.

I was under the impression that we might one day see native Win32 and other
native clients. In that case Xaw libraries are no longer a problem, leaving
Xpm as the main unreasonable requirement.

> One day (soon?) the GTK+ port will be the preferred client, and
> Xaw will be phased out.  Then people will have imlib, and PNG
> will be the option of choice.
> 
> But until then, XPM is the best option, among a bad lot.

Why not make a forward thinking choice now, while we can still reasonably
break compatibility. If we leave it too long then we'll eiter have to stick
with Xpm regardless or support multiple formats (which wouldn't be bad in
itself, but would make the compilation requirements even worse).

Regards,
Steve Hodge