DJ Lucas wrote:
> Bruce Dubbs wrote:
>
>> I am not very familiar with the libungif and giflib packages. the imlib
>> instructions says one "or" the other.
>>
>> Are there any conflicts if both packages are installed?
>> Is one preferable over the other, and if so, why?
>>
>> -- Bruce
>
>
> IIRC, libungif is lacks the formly patent protected LZW compression,
> who's last effective date expired in mid 2005 (China, it expired late
> 2004 for the US), so it creates only uncompressed GIFs. It does
> uncompress LZW since there was no patent on the decompresssion, where as
> giflib does both compression and decompression. The giflib instructions
> create symlinks for libungif compatibility. This is all from memory so
> the exact details are a bit fuzzy. giflib is/was the way to go, so long
> as it was kept to date with the libungif version, which hasn't been an
> issue since 4.1.0b (again IIRC sometime in early/mid 2004?). All but
> the dates are mentioned in the intro for libungif in the book.
I don't see any dates in the book. :(
My understaning is the same as yours: all the patents have expired.
The issue here is whether we need both these packages in the book or
indeed, to know if they can or should both be installed on a single system.
The libraries do have differnt names, but the listing of programs seems
to be the same. I wonder if we could jsut drop ungif and make symbolic
links from libungif.{so,a} to libgif.(so,a}?
-- Bruce
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