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

[Vasco Alexandre Da Silva Costa <vasc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 9 Mar 1999, Nick Lamb wrote:

> On Tue, 9 Mar 1999, Vasco Alexandre Da Silva Costa wrote:
> 
> GIMP doesn't really have much use for imlib. If I point GIMP at a 23 colour
> GIF image the GIMP will load it as a 23 colour indexed image. Imlib will
> make it into a 24-bit image. If I point GIMP at a 24+8+8 multi-alpha TIFF
> then it will convert all the data into appropriate GIMP drawables. Imlib
> would just make another 24-bit image... In fact you'd have to try fairly
> hard to find any use at all for imlib in the GIMP.

I meant using Imlib to display the image.  Internally you would still have
that weird buffer with indexed colors, but the GIMP has a rendering engine
for displaying pictures which is basically replicating Imlib/GdkRgb's
rendering engine (doing dithering, etc).

> > === What i would like to see in Imlib is:
> > 
> > * it being programed using Gdk & GdkRgb: no direct X calls please.
> 
> I'd like to see this, but I suspect that imlib needs some very low level
> features to get the performance you already despise. Slower isn't better.
> 
> > * make Imlib use GIMP plugins to load images.  This way the possibilities
> >   are endless.
> 
> (1) Overhead is enormous (wanna load 100 GIFs? come back after coffee)
> (2) Imlib becomes even larger (to accomodate PDB handling)
> (3) Plug-ins do some very weird things (offset paletted alpha images!)
> which Imlib can't possibly support without GIMP running.
> (4) Why do I need to install GIMP plug-ins to view image files? Huh?

(1) Imlib doesn't seem that much faster at image loading than the GIMP to
    me.
(2) X is much larger :-)
(3) The more image formats we support the better.
(4) Why do you need to install plugins in Netscape & GIMP which do the
    same thing and use the same code in a different manner?

> > * move Imlib into Gdk.  I see no need for yet another lib.
> 
> Gdk == Low level window system stuff.
> Imlib == General image loading & rendering super-library

If that's the case then what is GdkRgb doing in the Gdk distribution?, it
does do dithering & all.  What are GdkColorContext's  for?  Have you
actually seen the size of the code in Imlib?  Asides from the dithering
stuff (which is already done by GdkRgb) and the modules there isn't that
much code in.  Also i see no reason for using modules which are hardcoded
in the main lib.  That defeats the purpose of using modules!

> Move libjpeg into libtiff. I see no need for yet another lib (!)

Why not?  But as the authors say, their libs are for providing example
code only...

> Move Gdk into Gtk+. I see no need for yet another lib (!?)

That's different.  Gdk is highly X-dependent, while Gtk+ is supposed to be
portable and based on Gdk & Glib.

---
Vasco Alexandre da Silva Costa, student @ Instituto Superior Tecnico,
Technical University of Lisbon - Software & Computer Engineering