Re: [Gimp-developer] XCF support added to ImageMagick

2001-12-16 Thread Branko Collin


On 4 Dec 2001, at 13:09, Sven Neumann wrote:
 Leonard Rosenthol [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
  At 12:06 PM 12/4/2001 +0100, Sven Neumann wrote:
  Leonard Rosenthol [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
  
I just thought I'd let you folks know that I just 
checked support for reading (writing will come 
later) XCF files to the ImageMagick library
 (http://www.imagemagick.org).
   
   if you ask me, this is a bad idea and wasted time 
   and effort, but I guess it's too late now to discourage 
   you from trying to read XCF.
  
   OK, I'll bite...
  
  Why would adding support for XCF to ImageMagick 
  be a bad idea and wasted time and effort?  Because 
  XCF is changing? Because GIMP users would use GIMP 
  to convert image formats?  Because no one really uses 
  XCF as a file format?
 
 (1) Because the XCF format may change at any time and will do so
 sooner or later.  
 (2) Because to mimick the way GIMP projects its layers and channels 

 you have to implement all layer modes which boils down 
 to copying or reimplementing a lot of code from The GIMP. This 
 will become worse as soon as XCF will be extended to handle 
 text and effect layers. You will end up either rewriting or 
 copying the GIMP core.
  
 (3) Because GIMP can export it's images in a whole bunch of formats 
 ImageMagick and other programs can handle perfectly well.

Today I saw another reason for XCF to be taken more seriously as an 
interchange format by the GIMP developers (or at least to document 
the format and its effects better).

In rec.photo.digital somebody wrote in the thread 'IMatch cataloger / 
workflow questions' about XCF support for a program called Imatch. 
The poster would like to see this support, because he keeps edits of 
his digital photos as .xcf files, IMO an altogether sensible use of 
the format. And of course, a catalogue program should be able to deal 
with XCF files then. 

I am not trying to advocate XCF as a format for the exchange of 
images, but I do think that if for instance the authors of 
ImageMagick want to support it, they may have a good reason for that.

-- 
branko collin
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Re: [Gimp-developer] XCF support added to ImageMagick

2001-12-16 Thread Sven Neumann

Hi,

Branko Collin [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 Today I saw another reason for XCF to be taken more seriously as an 
 interchange format by the GIMP developers (or at least to document 
 the format and its effects better).
 
 In rec.photo.digital somebody wrote in the thread 'IMatch cataloger / 
 workflow questions' about XCF support for a program called Imatch. 
 The poster would like to see this support, because he keeps edits of 
 his digital photos as .xcf files, IMO an altogether sensible use of 
 the format. And of course, a catalogue program should be able to deal 
 with XCF files then. 
 
 I am not trying to advocate XCF as a format for the exchange of 
 images, but I do think that if for instance the authors of 
 ImageMagick want to support it, they may have a good reason for that.

my whole point was that we should try to come up with a reasonable
interchange format for multi-layered images instead of using XCF
which isn't really well-suited for this task. Introducing XCF support
into various other apps will make that even more difficult. Perhaps
I'm thinking too idealistic here...


Salut, Sven
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Re: [Gimp-developer] XCF support added to ImageMagick

2001-12-16 Thread Branko Collin

On 16 Dec 2001, at 14:58, Sven Neumann wrote:
 Branko Collin [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 
  I am not trying to advocate XCF as a format for the exchange of
  images, but I do think that if for instance the authors of
  ImageMagick want to support it, they may have a good reason for
  that.
 
 my whole point was that we should try to come up with a reasonable
 interchange format for multi-layered images instead of using XCF which
 isn't really well-suited for this task. Introducing XCF support into
 various other apps will make that even more difficult. Perhaps I'm
 thinking too idealistic here...

Don't ever stop being idealistic! :-)

However, there may be a real world need for XCF support in other apps 
right now. The ImageMagick team might be better equiped to judge 
wether they need XCF support than we do.

Also, if some entity decides they need XCF support, they should run 
into a brick wall when they try and find out more from us.

From what I understand, the hardest part is to make sure that any 
effect (even as simple as adding pixels from two layers for the 
screen) looks the same in GIMP as in any other program. I do not 
think that is necessary. Rather, the users should be informed that if 
they take something that needs to be rendered, they should be aware 
that there may be differences between renderings in different 
programs. (This should perhaps be in the Help files under the 
chapters for the import/export plug-ins for XCF and PSD and other 
such formats.) And of course, the way the GIMP renders images should 
be documented somewhere.

All IMHO.

-- 
branko collin
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Re: [Gimp-developer] XCF support added to ImageMagick

2001-12-16 Thread Nick Lamb

On Sun, Dec 16, 2001 at 02:58:20PM +0100, Sven Neumann wrote:
 my whole point was that we should try to come up with a reasonable
 interchange format for multi-layered images instead of using XCF
 which isn't really well-suited for this task. Introducing XCF support
 into various other apps will make that even more difficult. Perhaps
 I'm thinking too idealistic here...

Well I'm thinking the same way, maybe we're all idealists.

Maybe we should just tell these people that we feel the same way about
XCF as JASC do about PSP, Adobe do about PSD. If we wake up and decide
to invert the meaning of 50% of flags, re-arrange the structures and
then add fourteen mysterious new values that's OUR problem, and trying
to standardise our private format makes no sense.

There is a mostly completed, free/open standard for storing lots of
related image data called MNG. It was primarily targetted at animation
but the higher levels include IMHO sufficient expressiveness to store
image layer stacks, icon collections or any other type of multi-image
format.

http://www.libpng.org/pub/mng/

With a few public required chunks added you could express any image
layer stack in this format and no-one loses their private format for
future expansion (which is the harsh reality of what will happen if
we support these plans to implement XCF in other apps)

Nick.
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Re: [Gimp-developer] XCF support added to ImageMagick

2001-12-16 Thread Sven Neumann

Hi,

Austin Donnelly [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

  my whole point was that we should try to come up with a reasonable
  interchange format for multi-layered images instead of using XCF
  which isn't really well-suited for this task. Introducing XCF support
  into various other apps will make that even more difficult. Perhaps
  I'm thinking too idealistic here...
 
 What's so bad about XCF anyway?  It's got a version identifier, and
 it's a tagged format so old loaders can skip sections they don't
 understand.  The only problem is the fixed tile size, yes?

not really. OK, the file format does allow additions by adding new
property tags. These tags are integers which will lead to problems
as soon as XCF is not only used and extended in The GIMP. Imagine
another application wanted to use XCF since it's such a great and 
widely understood format for multi-layered images, but needs to add 
some information which is not yet there. If they'd extend the property 
enum, they'd risk that someone else used the same tag for another 
addition. Since current XCF lacks a lot of features, extensions are
very probable. With the current scheme, I imagine the whole thing 
will get ugly very soon.

 Representing the same information in XML or whatever the sexy standard
 is this month doesn't buy us anything over what we have now.

Hmm, a format with properly namespaced tags would at least avoid the
problems I've outlined above. It doesn't need to be XML, though XML
would definitely not be a bad choice to define the structure of an
image and all the metadata people might want attach to it.

 Especially since the code used in loading and saving XCF is by now
 fairly mature and (hopefully!) bug-free.  Re-coding it is only going
 to introduce new bugs.  See the recent article linked off Slashdot
 about why throwing your code away and starting again is a bad idea,
 using Netscape and MS Word as examples of large projects which tried
 to re-code from scratch and failed: Netscape went bust, and MS quietly
 canned the Word re-write project.
 
 We should learn from the mistakes of others :)

I personally don't think the Netscape people made a mistake here and
I do believe that carefully rewriting an app piece by piece is the 
best thing that can be done for most apps.


Salut, Sven
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Re: [Gimp-developer] XCF support added to ImageMagick

2001-12-04 Thread Sven Neumann

Hi,

Leonard Rosenthol [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 At 12:06 PM 12/4/2001 +0100, Sven Neumann wrote:
 Leonard Rosenthol [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 
   I just thought I'd let you folks know that I just checked support for
   reading (writing will come later) XCF files to the ImageMagick library
   (http://www.imagemagick.org).
  
 if you ask me, this is a bad idea and wasted time and effort, but I
 guess it's too late now to discourage you from trying to read XCF.
 
  OK, I'll bite...
 
  Why would adding support for XCF to ImageMagick be a bad
 idea and wasted time and effort?  Because XCF is changing? Because
 GIMP users would use GIMP to convert image formats?  Because no one
 really uses XCF as a file format?

(1) Because the XCF format may change at any time and will do so
sooner or later.  
(2) Because to mimick the way GIMP projects its layers and channels 
you have to implement all layer modes which boils down to copying 
or reimplementing a lot of code from The GIMP. This will become 
worse as soon as XCF will be extended to handle text and effect 
layers. You will end up either rewriting or copying the GIMP core.  
(3) Because GIMP can export it's images in a whole bunch of formats 
ImageMagick and other programs can handle perfectly well.

But then, you are free to do whatever you like and I will certainly 
not throw stones into your way.


Salut, Sven
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Re: [Gimp-developer] XCF support added to ImageMagick

2001-12-04 Thread René

Sven Neumann [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 Leonard Rosenthol [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 
  I just thought I'd let you folks know that I just checked support for
  reading (writing will come later) XCF files to the ImageMagick library
  (http://www.imagemagick.org).
  
  Right now you'd need to get it via CVS, BUT it will be part of the
  standard 5.4.1 distribution due on Friday.
 
 if you ask me, this is a bad idea and wasted time and effort, but I
 guess it's too late now to discourage you from trying to read XCF.

I'm glad you didn't ask Sven, I think xcf support in imagemagick is really
cool.  One less thing to worry about when scripting.

There will be a new version of xcf eventually - so what?  I'll use
imagemagick today, and if no-one finds it worth the time implementing
support for the new(er) version(s) I'm no worse off than if it hadn't been
available at all. 

Thanks for the work Leonard Rosenthol,


-- René
ps: and thanks for your's, Sven Neumann, gimp is good.

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Re: [Gimp-developer] XCF support added to ImageMagick

2001-12-04 Thread Sven Neumann

Hi,

Leonard Rosenthol [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 For image web galleries, I'd suggest they use GIMP in batch mode
 to convert to another format or to create the thumbnails directly.
 That would probably have been a way to go for ImageMagick too.
 
  For whatever reason, most (all?) of the products in this
 space have chosen to use IM (or something similiar) to do the
 conversions rather than going to GIMP.  If I were to guess, I would
 suspect it's because they can interact with IM directly from Java,
 Perl and PHP instead of having to build batch files and then run
 Gimp (higher overhead).

yes, the GIMP batch mode sucks and we know that. Actually I do point
everyone who asks about batch conversion to ImageMagick. This will
improve considerably in GIMP-1.4, but convert will probably stay
the tool of choice for most batch-conversion jobs.

 It is as much a bad choice for image distribution as
 Photoshop files are, or Word files for exchanging text documents.
 
  I would argue that for non-simple images, the Photoshop
 format has a lot going for it!  Sure, if all you want is a flat
 bitmap, it's WAY OVERKILL - but for layered CMYK images with clipping
 paths, it's the way to go!  In fact, I once had a client with the
 requirement of taking CMYK images with 16million colors and either
 transparency or clipping into PDF/PS documents.  The only image format
 that met the requirements was Photoshop/PSD.

Unfortunately you are probably right here, but this does not make PSD
a better format for image distribution (because it is proprietary and
poorly documented).

Actually we discussed a better XCF format on #gimp lately and one of
our goals was to design an image format that could serve our needs in
The GIMP but would also be open for things we don't support (yet). An
important aspect of the design was to make it easy for other
applications to read, modify and create this format. Such a format
would serve well as a distribution and exchange format for complex
image data and should of course be supported by ImageMagick.

I don't know if it would be possible to define a format that would
meet the additional very GIMP-specific requirements that came up
during the discussion, so we might end up defining a very
GIMP-specific XCF2 format again. However it seems there is the need to
come up with an image format for distribution and exchange of complex
image data. Instead of spreading the existing XCF format, which is very
limited, we should evaluate existing formats and if we come to the
conclusion no such format is available, we can create our own,
document and implement it. This can and should be a combined effort of
at least the GIMP and the ImageMagick developers, probably including
GNOME and KDE people.

I promise I'll try to write down our thoughts on a better XCF format
soon, but I have to get back to work now...


Salut, Sven
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Re: [Gimp-developer] XCF support added to ImageMagick

2001-12-04 Thread Seth Burgess

Hi Leonard,

I think if you make sure to check the version of the XCF, this will be
exceptionally useful to users of ImageMagick.  Its not at all an uncommon
request on gimp-user or the gimp newsgroup.  Batch conversion is still best
handled via the commandline, and having the ability to use gimp's working
format is a big bonus.

It makes us bump the version number when we upgrade the image format, but we
try to do that anyway.

Now, I don't expect it to be easy to implement (involving significant chunks of
the core, as Sven mentioned), but if you've got that covered please do add it!

Happy GIMPing,

Seth Burgess
[EMAIL PROTECTED]


--- Leonard Rosenthol [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 At 02:04 PM 12/4/2001 +0100, Sven Neumann wrote:
 The idea to use XCF in an AbiWord document makes me shudder.
 
  The AbiWord folks actually liked the idea!  I don't know how many 
 people will actually use it - but it's nice to have and it continues to 
 improve the integration of GNOME Office.
 
 
 For image web galleries, I'd suggest they use GIMP in batch mode
 to convert to another format or to create the thumbnails directly.
 That would probably have been a way to go for ImageMagick too.
 
  For whatever reason, most (all?) of the products in this space 
 have chosen to use IM (or something similiar) to do the conversions rather 
 than going to GIMP.  If I were to guess, I would suspect it's because they 
 can interact with IM directly from Java, Perl and PHP instead of having to 
 build batch files and then run Gimp (higher overhead).
 
 
 I don't think XCF is intended to be a file format for image
 distribution.
 
  OK.  If that is not the intent, it's not the intent!
 
 
 It is as much a bad choice for image distribution as
 Photoshop files are, or Word files for exchanging text documents.
 
  I would argue that for non-simple images, the Photoshop format 
 has a lot going for it!  Sure, if all you want is a flat bitmap, it's WAY 
 OVERKILL - but for layered CMYK images with clipping paths, it's the way to 
 go!  In fact, I once had a client with the requirement of taking CMYK 
 images with 16million colors and either transparency or clipping into 
 PDF/PS documents.  The only image format that met the requirements was 
 Photoshop/PSD.
 
 
 It's sole purpose is to save intermediate states of your work and
 probably exchange it among GIMP users.
 
  In that case, I definitely WONT implement saving as XCF!
 
 
 Leonard
 
 
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Re: [Gimp-developer] XCF support added to ImageMagick

2001-12-04 Thread Austin Donnelly

On Tuesday, 4 Dec 2001, Seth Burgess wrote:

 I think if you make sure to check the version of the XCF, this will be
 exceptionally useful to users of ImageMagick.  Its not at all an uncommon
 request on gimp-user or the gimp newsgroup.  Batch conversion is still best
 handled via the commandline, and having the ability to use gimp's working
 format is a big bonus.
 
 It makes us bump the version number when we upgrade the image format, but we
 try to do that anyway.
 
 Now, I don't expect it to be easy to implement (involving
 significant chunks of the core, as Sven mentioned), but if you've
 got that covered please do add it!

Me too!

I think being able to convert XCFs with ImageMagick would be a very
useful tool.  Just make it clear to users that the rendering they see
may not be pixel-for-pixel the same as the gimp version (eg because of
slightly different rounding of values combined in layers, etc).

Austin
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Re: [Gimp-developer] XCF support added to ImageMagick

2001-12-04 Thread Leonard Rosenthol

At 06:06 AM 12/4/2001 -0800, Seth Burgess wrote:
I think if you make sure to check the version of the XCF,

 I am pretty sure that I do, but I'll hack up some files and try it 
out. It already deal with the differences between the old and new headers.


Now, I don't expect it to be easy to implement (involving significant 
chunks of the core, as Sven mentioned), but if you've got that covered 
please do add it!

 It doesn't support all the different layer compositing modes, but 
it does fully support loading multi-layered RGB and grayscale images and 
respecting their layer opacity and visibility settings.


Leonard

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Re: [Gimp-developer] XCF support added to ImageMagick

2001-12-04 Thread wls

  Appreciated.   But it does sound like you'd also not be interested 
 in my adding XCF writing support to ImageMagick then either??!  (which is 
 fine, I have other things to work on ;).

My two cents ... Personally, I am in favor of XCF support in ImageMagick.

Bill Sebok  Computer Software Manager, Univ. of Maryland, Astronomy
Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED] URL: http://www.astro.umd.edu/~wls/
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Re: [Gimp-developer] XCF support added to ImageMagick

2001-12-04 Thread Sven Neumann

Hi,

Jon Winters [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 Ok, this is bothersome.  I expect XCF to grow and change and improve but I
 also expect a certain amount of backwards compatability.
 
 I'm using Gimp in a production environment and I'm storing all of my
 original artwork images (anything with layers) in .xcf.gz files.
 
 I'll export the images that actually get used on web sites to web friendly
 formats but I always keep any original image using layers stored as an
 XCF.
 
 If I read your email correctly I shouldn't do this because I risk coming
 to work one day, upgrading gimp, and finding my entire portfolio of
 production images un-openable in the tool that created them.

you got me wrong. If we ever decide to change our file format, we will
always assure that GIMP can read (and probably also write) the old
format. We will also try our best to extend older GIMP versions so
they can at least read the new format (fortunately this can easily be
achieved through plug-ins).


Salut, Sven
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Re: [Gimp-developer] XCF support added to ImageMagick

2001-12-04 Thread pcg

On Tue, Dec 04, 2001 at 02:06:56PM +0100, René [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 There will be a new version of xcf eventually - so what?  I'll use
 imagemagick today, and if no-one finds it worth the time implementing
 support for the new(er) version(s) I'm no worse off than if it hadn't been

ImageMagick can read xcf files using delegates for quite some time,
btw. Of course, gimp must be installed for this to work. gimp should be able
to save .miff files, too, although I am not sure how tested that is.

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Re: [Gimp-developer] XCF support added to ImageMagick

2001-12-04 Thread pcg

On Tue, Dec 04, 2001 at 11:28:07AM -0500, Leonard Rosenthol [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
wrote:
 ImageMagick can read xcf files using delegates for quite some time,
 btw. Of course, gimp must be installed for this to work.
 
 Right, you could have always done this - but it would have meant 
 having GIMP and temp files.

True, and the filter I wrote for this was written before gimp had
miff-support.

 saving of .miff is better than GIMP's reading of them.  It can 
 only handle about 50% of features in MIFF.

Back when I implemented it, it implemented the common subset of miff and
gimp.  If the format has changed so much that it is a problem, I could
improve the miff saver. (this is unrelated to the xcf discussion, btw).

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Re: [Gimp-developer] XCF support added to ImageMagick

2001-12-04 Thread Raphael Quinet

On Tue, 04 Dec 2001, Marc wrote:
   ImageMagick has NO license.  The only thing we say is:
[...]
  In any case, my version of ImageMagick (older, 5.3.6) does have a license
  (in Copyright.txt).
 
  (and I think it is very much BSD-like).

Right.  And I was wrong in my previous comment: the license is BSD-like
but without the advertising clause.  So it is compatible with the GPL
and therefore the code could be re-used in the Gimp if necessary.  Sorry
for this confusion.  I should have re-read the license before commenting
on it.

-Raphael

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Re: [Gimp-developer] XCF support added to ImageMagick

2001-12-04 Thread Stephen J Baker

On Tue, 4 Dec 2001, Raphael Quinet wrote:

 On Tue, 04 Dec 2001, Marc wrote:
ImageMagick has NO license.  The only thing we say is:
 [...]
   In any case, my version of ImageMagick (older, 5.3.6) does have a license
   (in Copyright.txt).
  
   (and I think it is very much BSD-like).

 Right.  And I was wrong in my previous comment: the license is BSD-like
 but without the advertising clause.  So it is compatible with the GPL
 and therefore the code could be re-used in the Gimp if necessary.

(Although it *does* mean that ImageMagick had better not be using
any GIMP code to help out it's decode/display of XCF's or it'll be
in breach of GPL)


Steve Baker  (817)619-2657 (Vox/Vox-Mail)
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Re: [Gimp-developer] XCF support added to ImageMagick

2001-12-04 Thread Leonard Rosenthol

At 12:16 PM 12/4/2001 -0600, Stephen J Baker wrote:
(Although it *does* mean that ImageMagick had better not be using
any GIMP code to help out it's decode/display of XCF's or it'll be
in breach of GPL)

 No GIMP code - at least not verbatim.

 We don't use glib and we have our own imaging engines, so all that 
stuff got rewritten but I did keep the general structure of loading pretty 
much the same so that it would be easy to make changes in the future.

 If anyone from the Gimp team wants to review it for potential too 
much copying and GPL infractions, please feel free and I will make any 
changes!


Leonard

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Re: [Gimp-developer] XCF support added to ImageMagick

2001-12-04 Thread Kelly Martin

On Tue, Dec 04, 2001 at 07:35:55AM -0500, Leonard Rosenthol wrote:

 Don't you have to maintain backwards compatibility with your own 
 user base?  I certainly expect that you will change things to support new 
 features (CMYK, etc.), but since old GIMP users have to be able to read 
 those files, your changes would have to be backwards compat.

We can easily write our XCF loader to handle multiple file formats.
(There are already two XCF file versions; the loader identifies the
version based on a magic cookie in the header and changes its loader
behavior appropriately; the saver uses the oldest version that is able
to accurately represent the image being saved.)  We're not really that
concerned with older GIMPs being able to read XCF files saved by newer
GIMPs.

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Re: [Gimp-developer] XCF support added to ImageMagick

2001-12-04 Thread Branko Collin

On 4 Dec 2001, at 13:09, Sven Neumann wrote:
 Leonard Rosenthol [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
  At 12:06 PM 12/4/2001 +0100, Sven Neumann wrote:
  Leonard Rosenthol [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
  
I just thought I'd let you folks know that I just checked
support for reading (writing will come later) XCF files to the
ImageMagick library (http://www.imagemagick.org).
   
  if you ask me, this is a bad idea and wasted time and effort, but I
  guess it's too late now to discourage you from trying to read XCF.
  
   OK, I'll bite...
  
   Why would adding support for XCF to ImageMagick be a bad
  idea and wasted time and effort?  Because XCF is changing? Because
  GIMP users would use GIMP to convert image formats?  Because no one
  really uses XCF as a file format?
 
 (1) Because the XCF format may change at any time and will do so
 sooner or later.  

In a well documented way, I hope, so that the ImageMagick people can 
support the new format without too much trouble.

 (2) Because to mimick the way GIMP projects its layers and channels 
 you have to implement all layer modes which boils down to copying
 or reimplementing a lot of code from The GIMP. This will become
 worse as soon as XCF will be extended to handle text and effect
 layers. You will end up either rewriting or copying the GIMP core.

My guess IM already has to do similar things for PSD. Admittedly, I 
only took a brief look at the PSD specs and the PSD load plug-in of 
GIMP, but they did not seem to be too different (with the exception 
of course of PS features of version 5 and newer).
  
 (3) Because GIMP can export it's images in a whole bunch of formats 
 ImageMagick and other programs can handle perfectly well.

As mentioned, not in a way that will keep layers and such.

-- 
branko collin
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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[Gimp-developer] XCF support added to ImageMagick

2001-11-27 Thread Leonard Rosenthol

I just thought I'd let you folks know that I just checked support for 
reading (writing will come later) XCF files to the ImageMagick library 
(http://www.imagemagick.org).

Right now you'd need to get it via CVS, BUT it will be part of the standard 
5.4.1 distribution due on Friday.


Leonard
Member, ImageMagick Studio

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