Re: new image library "requirements"

[David Kastrup]

Jan Djärv <address@hidden> writes:

> Miles Bader skrev:
>> I just tried compiling a new emacs, and the configure failed with:
>>
>>    configure: error: The following required libraries was not found:
>>         libgif/libungif libtiff
>>    Maybe some development libraries/packages are missing?
>>    If you don't want to link with them give
>>         --with-gif=no --with-tiff=no
>>    as options to configure
>>
>> While there's a case to be made for "requiring" (without options) X
>> libraries or even jpeg /png, I think requiring these is kind of silly.
>>
>> Tiff is fairly rarely used except in specialized applications.

Disagree: it is the dominant format for CMYK work.

>> The case with .gif is more vague, but it seems largely a legacy
>> format, and is getting more and more rare these days -- you see it
>> on old web sites, and people still use it for "animated" images
>> (which emacs doesn't support), but it seems kind of unusual to see
>> it for the kind of content which people might keep around.

Disagree: gifs still outnumber png files about 3:1 at least on the
web.

>> At the least, I'd drop the "requirement" for tiff.
>
> I asked the same thing, but David Kastrup was the only one who
> commented (granted, the subject line was not about image libraries):
>
>> It is quite common in prepress, and since Emacs includes stuff like
>> image-dired, it would appear reasonable to not omit it without
>> notice.

The idea behind the requirements was to not get the user an Emacs
version that does not have full capabilities without notice.  Since
image browsing is a part of Emacs, I feel that this is appropriate.
One could turn it into a very strong worded and visible warning
instead, possibly.

But the previous behavior of being somewhere in a yes-and-no summary
list (among items for which "no" does not imply a loss of
functionality, like for a particular memory allocation scheme) is not
likely to get the user to realize what happens.

-- 
David Kastrup