ANNOUNCE: GdkMagick 0.4

[lightmanaj earthlink net]

See below for the README file. Changes in this release include:

* Added initial code for ImageMagick 5.0 compatibility. This code has
  not been fully tested. Because ImageMagick 5.0 is still under
  development, the code is not yet guaranteed to work, much less compile,
  with a given snapshot of ImageMagick 5.0. The GdkMagick version number
  increase (to 0.4) reflects this change.

* Added an aclocal macro (gdkmagick.m4) to allow applications to
  check for GdkMagick in autoconf-based configure scripts.

* Added new public functions: gdk_magick_is_magick5,
  gdk_magick_check_version, and gdk_magick_string_to_version.
  These functions are mainly intended for use by the gdkmagick.m4
  configuration macro.

* Added grayscale visual support to gdk_magick_render_from_gdk. This
  is still untested, as I don't have a grayscale visual available.

* Fixed a bug in configure.in which caused library paths containing
  hyphens (-) to be ignored. However, this means that the ImageMagick
  library link path will contain more flags than just the -l and -L
  parameters. Depending on the user's configuration of ImageMagick,
  flags like -O2 and -s will remain when compiling the code, even if
  the user didn't define them while configuring GdkMagick.

* Collapsed all global variables into one global structure:
  __gdk_magick_data. This ensures that the least amount of namespace
  real-estate is occupied by GdkMagick for storing global data.

Thanks,
--Arthur

README for GdkMagick Version 0.4
================================

    GdkMagick Version 0.4, A C-Language Library for Integrating the
    ImageMagick and GDK Toolkits

    Copyright (C) 1999 Arthur Jerijian
  
    This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
    it under the terms of the GNU Library General Public License as
    published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the
    License, or (at your option) any later version.
  
    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
    GNU Library General Public License for more details.
  
    You should have received a copy of the GNU Library General Public
    License along with this program; see the file COPYING.LIB.  If not,
    write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330,
    Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
   
GdkMagick is a C-language library for integrating the ImageMagick library
with the GDK toolkit, one of the components of the GTK+ graphical user
interface library.

The ImageMagick library (libMagick.so) represents over eight years of
continuous development. ImageMagick knows how to read and write over
70 distinct image formats and provides over 60 basic image processing
operations (not including the many sub-modes for those operations). Due to
the popularity of ImageMagick, ImageMagick is now included in almost
all open-source Unix distributions and is often installed under
proprietary versions of Unix as well.

GTK+ (The GIMP Toolkit) is a small and efficient widget set designed with
the general look and feel of Motif. In reality, it looks much better than
Motif. GTK+ contains common widgets and some more complex widgets such as
file selection and color selection dialog boxes. GTK+ is used in many
popular free software projects, including the GIMP image processing tool
and the GNOME desktop environment. The GDK and GdkRGB components of GTK+
provide basic display drawing primitives, such as the manipulation of
pixmaps, bitmaps, and display images.

The GdkMagick library allows applications to utilize the ImageMagick image
processing resources and allow them to be integrated with the GTK+ toolkit.
GdkMagick includes functions which allow an application to convert an image
back and forth between an ImageMagick image structure and a GDK pixmap,
bitmap, or image structure. GdkMagick uses the GdkRGB routines to manage
color and to perform the actual image rendering, including dithering when
not enough colors are available.

The latest version of GdkMagick is available at the GdkMagick home page,
located at the following Web site:

	http://home.earthlink.net/~lightmanaj/GdkMagick

NOTE: This is an ALPHA TEST release of GdkMagick. I do not expect
this software to function properly in all cases, as it is still under
development and many features are not yet fully tested. In addition, the API
is not yet frozen and is subject to change in any future release of
GdkMagick. I take no responsibility for any damages resulting from the use
of this software.

GdkMagick uses GNU Libtool in order to build shared libraries on a variety
of systems. While this is very nice for making usable binaries, it can
create difficulty when trying to debug a program. For this reason,
compilation of shared libraries can be turned off by specifying the
`--disable-shared' option to `configure'.

This ALPHA TEST release of GdkMagick is protected under the GNU Library
General Public License (LGPL). This allows for the greatest possible
freedom for developers to use and/or modify this library. The LGPL also
provides a licensing agreement compatible with that of the GDK library.

This version of GdkMagick was tested using the following configurations:

* Red Hat Linux 6.0 with X11R6.3 (XFree86 3.3.3.1)
* HP-UX 10.20 with X11R6.3 (downloaded from ftp://ftp.x.org and custom-built)
* Solaris 2.5.1 with X11R5 (in /usr/openwin)
* Solaris 7 with X11R5 (in /usr/openwin)

The following components are required to build and run GdkMagick:

* GNU sed, GNU make, and GNU CC. These packages are highly recommended
  for proper configuration and building of GdkMagick. You may use
  other versions of sed, make, and cc, but they haven't been tested
  and may cause possible problems during configuration and building.
  The latest GNU utilities are available at the following download
  site:

	ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu

* X Window System Version 11 Release 5 or greater. This version of
  GdkMagick was tested using XFree86 3.3.3.1 on Linux and the
  default X11R5 distribution on Solaris 2.5.1.

* GLIB and GTK+ version 1.2 or greater. The latest releases of GLIB and
  GTK+ are available at the following download site:

	ftp://ftp.gtk.org/pub/gtk

* The ImageMagick API version 4.2.8 or greater. The latest version of
  ImageMagick is available at the following download site:

	ftp://ftp.wizards.dupont.com/pub/ImageMagick

  WARNING: Support for ImageMagick 5.0 is in progress. Because
  ImageMagick 5.0 is still under development, the GdkMagick code is not yet
  guaranteed to work, much less compile, with a given snapshot of
  ImageMagick 5.0.

See the doc/ subdirectory for some API documentation and example programs.
This ALPHA TEST release of GdkMagick isn't yet fully documented, but the
documentation will be complete once GdkMagick is ready for production use.

If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or bug reports,
don't hesitate to send me (Arthur Jerijian) e-mail. My e-mail address is:

	lightmanaj@earthlink.net

I hope you enjoy using this software!