hello developers I move this thread to dev becouse i think there are some developer related issues i would like to point out. Last weekend i looked into the current imagemagic and JAI implementation and allso in the imagemagick java api that Michiel mentioned as an option for a third converter implementation. I find that the current situation is a bit awkward, and maybe will need to be changed in the future, with massive backwards-compatability issues:
1 there is a small number of commands that are being abstracted from implementation. This set is allso the currently implemented in ConvertJAI. Apart from this set all other commands are just passed to imagemagick on the fly. Errors can not be cougt and if the imagemagick people would decide (unlikely, but beyond hour control) to change these commands all non-abstracted imagetemplates in mmabse templates would be broken. 2 Due to an apperant change in java (1.4.1) specifications it is no longer possible to pass characters outside the ascii set to imagemagick. This makes all text functions of imagemagick pretty much useless. The current java api supports a limited set of commmands and i think text is not supported (yet). 3 If you would want to make a more complete JAI implementation you would practically hav to rebuild imagemagick in java in order to ensure backwards competability. What dous this lead to? I think it is unfortunate that the abstraction of commands in the image templates has been dropped. It is not mmbase-like seems and it seems that we are stuck with one implementation (imagemagick), and that implementation dous not function well anymore becouse of the different behavour of Runtime.exec (in java 1.4.1). It is perhaps not an immediate problem, but still it is messy, and perhaps needs some kind of attention. Ernst
