annotate README.imagemagick @ 109865:131c45ff9c34

documented some more

This is the imagemagick branch of Emacs. Imagemagick can now be used
to load many new image formats, and also do useful transforms like
scaling and rotation.

This file will attempt to contain draft NEWS, Changelog and manual
entries for the new functionality. 

You might need to regenerate the configure scripts:
aclocal
automake
autoheader
autoconf
./configure --with-imagemagick


* TODO

- image-type-header-regexps priorities the jpeg loader over the
imagemagick one. This is not wrong, but how should a user go about
prefering the imagemagick loader? The user might like zooming etc in
jpegs.

- For some reason its unbearably slow to look at a page in a large
  image bundle using the :index feature. The imagemagick "display"
  command is also a bit slow, but nowhere near as slow as the emacs
  code. It seems imagemagick tries to unpack every page when loading
  the bundle. This feature is not the primary usecase for the
  imagemagick patch though.

- zooming the image like what is done for fonts in face-remap.el would
  be a useful and demo friendly addition.

- figure out what to do with the experimental features noted below.  

* TODO
#B _ complete documentation drafts below

#B X fix inconsistencys with spelling of imagemagick in the src
#B X report number of images in image bundle types somehow
Works like for "gif" support. Thanks to Juri Linkov.
#B X probably add pdf to inhibited types
#B X inhibit types is defconst should probably be defcustom
#B _ decide what to do with some uncommitted imagemagick support
  functions for image size etc.
#B _ Test with more systems
Tested on Fedora 12 so far, and the libmagick that ships with it.
Ubuntu 8.04 was also tested, but it seems it ships a broken ImageMagick.
#B X Also need some way to handle render methods that only work on newer ImageMagicks
Is handled by configure now

* Some nits from Stefan Monnier
I just took a quick look at the code and I see the following nits to fix:
#B _ obviously a merge will have to come with a good ChangeLog.
#B X also the merge will need to come with documentation.  Maybe not in the
   Texinfo form yet, but at least in the etc/NEWS with enough info that
   describes the `scale' and other such arguments that someone can start
   using them.
#B X the README talks about naming inconsistencies, I think these should be
  fixed before a first commit (should be straightforward).

#B X the "let" in image.el should not be followed by a line break and the while
   should be replaced by a dolist.

#B X the prototype of imagemagick_load_image has some odd indentation in ([[2010.06.14]])
   its args, not sure what happened.
#B X a few lines in the C code break the 80columns limit.
#B X please use ANSI style function declarations rather than K&R for new code. ([[2010.06.14]])
#B X you can get rid of the prototypes by reordering the code. ([[2010.06.14]])
#B X the docstrings in DEFUN should not be indented (they'll display ([[2010.06.14]])
   weirdly otherwise in C-h f).
#B X Some "{" are at the end of a for/if rather than on their own line. ([[2010.06.14]])
#B X why use "*( imtypes + i)" rather than "imtypes[i]"? ([[2010.06.14]])
#B X some "," lack a space after them. ([[2010.06.14]])
#B X several "=" and "==" lack spaces around them. ([[2010.06.14]])


* NEWS entry
** ImageMagick support
It is now possible to use the Imagemagick library to load many new
image formats in Emacs.

To enable, use the following configure option:
--with-imagemagick

The new function (imagemagick-types) returns a list of image file
extensions that your installation of imagemagick supports.

The function (imagemagick-register-types) will enable the imagemagick
support for the extensions in imagemagick-types minus the types listed
in imagemagick-types-inhibit.

imagemagick-types-inhibit has the value  '(C HTML HTM TXT PDF) by default.
This means imagemagick will be used also to load jpeg files, if you
have both jpeg and imagemagick libraries linked. Add 'JPG to
imagemagick-types-inhibit if you do not want this.

imagemagick-render-type is a new variable which can be set to choose
between screen render methods.

- 0 is a conservative metod which works with older ImageMagick
  versions. It is a bit slow, but robust.

- 1 utilizes a newer ImageMagick method   


Images loaded with imagemagick will support a couple of new display
specification behaviours:

- if the :width and :height keywords are specified, these values are
used for scaling the image. If only one of :width or :height is
specified, the other one will be calculated so as to preserve the
aspect ratio.If both :width and :height are specified, aspect ratio
will not be preserved.

- :rotation specifies a rotation angle in degrees.

- :index specifies which image inside an image bundle file format, such
as TIFF or DJVM, to view.

The image-metadata function can be used to retrieve the total number
of images in an image bundle. This is simmilar to how GIF files work.

* experimental

- :crop is used to specify a croping area: (width height x y).  This
is similar to the slice image specification, but has a different
purpose. :crop removes the croped areas from memory, so its memory
efficient if you only need to view a certain part of the image. The
slice specification can be used to pick diferent parts of the same
image, so its more disk and display efficient. :crop works well, but
it would still be better to find a way to have :splice do the same
thing.

- :geometry takes a geometry string as defined by ImageMagick:

scale%            
scale-x%xscale-y% 
width             
xheight           
widthxheight      
widthxheight^     
widthxheight!     
widthxheight>     
widthxheight<     
area@             
{size}{offset}
{size}{+-}x{+-}y

See the ImageMagick manual for more information.

- :crop is used to specify a croping area, with the "{size}{offset}" syntax.

:geometry and :crop with a string argument, are both particular to
ImageMagick, whereas the lisp interface is more general. Currently it
seems like the lisp interface is good enough, so the string argument
interface will probably be removed.

* Changelog entry
2010-06-12 Joakim Verona <[e-mail]>
           * image.c: Add support for ImageMagick. When HAVE_IMAGEMAGICK is
           defined:
           (imagemagick_image_p): New function to test for ImageMagic img.
           (imagemagick_load): New function to load ImageMagick img.
           (imagemagick_load_image): New function, helper for imagemagick_load
           (imagemagick-types): New function.
           (Qimagemagick): New Lisp_object.
           * image.el:
           (imagemagick-types-inhibit): New var.
           (imagemagick-register-types): New function.
           * config.in, Makefile.in, configure.in

* Manual entry
nothing yet, but the NEWS entry could be adapted.