Re: [gtk-list] Image Libraries

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

"Shead, Tim" <TShead@ebay.com> writes: 
> I've been reading all of the imlib vs. gdk-pixbuf vs. libart posts
> and

imlib = gdk-pixbuf

imlib2 = gdk-pixbuf + libart + GdkRGB

gdk-pixbuf and imlib 1 are image loaders, libart does rendering stuff.

> getting thoroughly confused.  I'm wondering if someone could explain these
> libraries' relatioships with each other, Gnome, GTK+, etc.  Reason I ask is
> that I'm "shopping around" for an image library for a large, portable (works
> fine under Win32) GTK+ application.  Naturally, I'd like to stay as close to
> the GTK+/GDK world as possible, but I'm concerned about large numbers of
> library dependencies, etc.  Any thoughts?
> 
> Tim's Wish List:
> 
> * Read/write a large number of formats

All of them do this

> * Portable between *nix / Win32

libart should be portable, gdk-pixbuf could mostly be ported but no one
has tried. imlib 1 and 2 are X-specific.

> * Alpha channel support

imlib 1 lacks this

> * Minimum number of dependencies / easy to compile & deploy
> 

Personally I would say write your own code based on gdk-pixbuf
potentially. There is not that much code involved and it will be a big
headache to keep gdk-pixbuf working on Windows.

Havoc