[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Isotrident 2

["Per I. Mathisen" <Per.Inge.Mathisen@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 15 Jan 2002, Daniel L Speyer wrote:
> That's weird, I've been doing all my editing in Gimp -- it handles them
> fine.

Perhaps he meant windows version of gimp. AFAIK it doesn't support xpm.

> Which freeciv clients support png?

Only the windows ports. There have been patches in the past that added png
support to the gtk client, but they have not been applied because those
who don't have gtk often don't have libpng either, and it would be a mess
to distribute both pngs and xpms.

Of course, it is not harder to solve this than saying freeciv requires
libpng, go install, but here our absolutely minimal requirements
philosophy is still holding development back.

> Last I'd heard, none, but I guess I missed something.  It would bring
> file size way down.  Do they support translucency?  That could be
> /very/ nice.

Yes, png is smaller, supports alpha-blending (translucency) and is better
in every respect. xpm is very bad for high colour resolution, has no
alpha-blending, is bloated and not supported on windows (dunno how this is
for mac/beos/amiga).

Yours,
Per

"What we anticipate seldom occurs: but what we least expect generally
happens." -- Benjamin Disraeli