[Freeciv-Dev] Re: imlib version 2

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

On Tue, 20 Jun 2000 raster@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> On 20 Jun, Daniel Burrows scribbled:
> ->  On Tue, Jun 20, 2000 at 04:27:48PM -0600, Roger Tucker 
> <roger.tucker@xxxxxxxx> was heard to say:
> ->  > I wonder if anyone has thought about when Freeciv should
> ->  > be updated to use Imlib2 over Imlib.
> ->  
> ->    IMO, if we're going to throw imlib out we might as well use gdk-pixbuf.
> ->  I haven't contributed a line of code for months, though, so you know what
> ->  my opinion is worth :-)
> 
> you could.. then again you could get a considerably faster renderer
> with imlib2 - i've done performance tests and it beats gdk-rgb by about
> 5-10% and gdk-pixbuf form double the speed and up :)
> 
> i'm workign on getting hardware acceleration into imlib2 right now
> actualy.. it will take a little while.. but i'm personally banking on
> hardware accel - so it WILL happen :)

First off, i'm sorry if this answer will be spamming you raster, i guess
you probably have to read enough email :)

As far as gdk-pixbuf, imlib, imlib2 issues go:

1) Is gdk-pixbuf still requiring imlib?  i think it did some time ago.
   If it isn't, it still requires libart, not everyone has it installed.
    (yes i know GNOME comes with libart but gtk+ doesn't)

2) Imlib has it's fair share of problems.  However we are using it now.
   One good thing is it doesn't require libz, libpng, etc to be installed
   unless you really require those plugins (probably gdk-pixbuf does the
   same?)

(In my view we should use GdkRGB or do colour quantization/dittering 
ourselves, that would allow to use better the Xaw client on displays with
a low colour resolution, yes we could use Imlib for X, but the Xaw players
are usually hardy folks which don't like to install extra libs on their
system :), besides it would introduce an extra dependency in the code).

3) Imlib2, i don't know much about it to comment, except it probably
   doesn't come preinstalled/with the standard distributions in any
   systems at all (at least yet) so it isn't an option IMHO (maybe
   Mandrake?).

PNG loading support would probably be useful, but that requires libz and
libpng and several people have already complained because of that too).

We will probably have to end up using our own loader, PNG or TGA IMO.
(Don't feel shocked, most games on any platform do things this way).


Oh yes, we only use imlib for pixmap loading & colour quantization/dittering
right now, in case you are thinking what are the changes involved, and
that code is fairly contained.


Conclusion:

Wait.  If gdk-pixbuf or Imlib2 get ubiquitous on our main target platform
(Linux systems) and are portable to unixoid systems then reconsider.


This is just my opinion, of course the head maintainer has a final say on
this, and suggestions and/or critique are accepted.

---
Vasco Alexandre da Silva Costa @ Instituto Superior Tecnico, Lisboa