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List:       imagemagick-user
Subject:    [magick-users] Re: libEMF library
From:       Vadim Plessky <lucy-ples () mtu-net ! ru>
Date:       2002-10-02 18:49:59
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Hi Dom!

On Wednesday 02 October 2002 7:55 pm, Dom Lachowicz wrote:
|  Hi Vadim,
|
|  >I would be appreciate if such library (either enhanced libEMF, or
|  > enhanced libwmf, or one new *super-library*) would be independent from
|  > renderer itself.
|  >I believe we need one *universal library* which can convert multiple
|  > vector formats one into another, and separate
|  > library(libraries)/frontends which perform conversion to raster pixmap
|  > (rasterization).
[...]
|
|  For the record, ImageMagick is a great library. That said, it's handling
| of EMF is non-existant, WMF is good (mainly because libwmf does all of the
| heavy lifting) and its SVG, PS, and PDF support are all fairly abysmal.
| ImageMagick also tends to be slow and heavy when being used for a general

Can you provide some data on this?
I am certanly interested.
What kind of platform you tested, Linux or Windows?

If Windows - I am not surprised. I have measured GS under both Windows 98 and 
Linux, on same machine. And GS is about 8 times faster on Linux.
See below results for PPSt 5.6 test.

GNU (ESP) GS 7.05 on Linux (compiled with gcc 3.0.4)
-------------------------
ESP Ghostscript (4M,100,fm.705)      3010
673.2   >1000!   4623.5   179.7   123.0   >1000!   1500

GNU GS 7.05 on WIndows 98 (downloaded binary)
-------------------------
GNU Ghostscript  (4M,100,fm.705)      3010
82.0   15.4   289.0  28.1   41.0   141.3   214
Total time for PPST: 15.6 sec.

So, I am not surprised if someone found IM on Windows to be slow (when it 
renders PS or PDF), as IM uses GS for rendering of PS files.
 But for me  IM is *fast* (except several cases which I report ot 
<magick-bugs> list)

| conversion library. Further, IM *rasterizes* all of its vector formats,
| with the exceptions of MVG and SVG. Saving a SVG as a PDF or EPS file would
| leave you with a SVG embedded as a PNG inside of a PDF or EPS. Yick.

Yes, I know.
And I would highly appreciate further development of IM which will allow 
*native* vector graphics conversion.

|
|  I have quite a bit of experience with IM. My company, Appligent (featured
|  parter logo on ImageMagick.org) contributes to and sponsors lots of IM
|  development.

ok, nice to know! :-)

|
|  >In ideal, infrastructire for handling vector formats should be following:
|  >(nothing new, FreeType has similar architecture, and this allows add
|  >support
|  >for new font formats easily)
|  >
|  >   Format reader (parser/driver)  -->  Unified vector format  --> Format
|  >writer
|  >(driver)
|  >So you woul dbe able to convert different vector formats as:
|  >   [WMF/EMF/SVG/EPS/PS/AI]  -->  Unified vector format  -->
|  >    --> [WMF/EMF/SVG/EPS/PS/AI]
|  >I don't know how valuable are other vector formats (CGM, DXF, DWG), but
|  >support for formats listed is quite important, IMO.
|
|  ImageMagick does this through its MVG (magick vector graphics), but as you
|  can see above, does so poorly. Right now, I am personally more interested
|  in:
|
|  Foo->Something
|  Something->Onscreen pixmap
|
|  This is not to say that we should not concentrate on converting that
|  "Something" to EMF or WMF so that it can later be viewed by MSWord. It's
|  just something I'd like to put off for a bit and see as a "parallel
| project" to this one.

What kind of format should be this "something"?

|
|  >Well, can someone explain to me what's wrong with libwmf?
|  >What is advanatage of 'libwmf2', and what are planned new features?
|  >(ah, and where I can download it from?..)
|  From my experience, libwmf (tested wmf2svg, wmf2eps) works quite well.
|  >May be, it shoul dbe modularized, too, and support for 'fig', 'gd', 'x'
|  > can be
|  >optional (compile-time switch)
|
|  libwmf1 was old and crusty. Martin Vermeer and I stopped maintaining it.
| It wasn't very extensible. FJF wrote libwmf2 (www.wvware.com), and you can
| learn more from there. WMF2SVG and WMF2EPS are good programs and are
| shipped with libwmf2, which is what you have installed on your box.

ok, does it mean that I have libwmf2?
[vad@VPlessky vad]$ rpm -q libwmf
libwmf-0.2.5-3mdk

|
|  WMF2SVG is very fast and lightweight if you trace through the code path -
| it is a direct translation from WMF -> SVG, there is no intermediate
| rendering stage involved.  It can now also do SVG -> WMF. However, libwmf
| also has a rendering engine so that you can output WMFs to PNG byte buffers

so, what about *skipping* (making optional) those modules?
And name them, say, 'wmf-utils'?

| and the like. This isn't needed for our project, and the correct solution
| (IMHO) would be to further improve libwmf2 to best meet our needs. I'll
| talk to FJF since he's a good friend of mine.

Pls let us know what FJF thinks about it.

|
|  >well, I think we should agree first what we understrand under 'vector
|  >graphics'
|  >Speaking about SVG: SVG has support for *fonts*.
|  >Do you plan to support SVG fonts? If yes, to what extent?
|  >In my opinion, SVG fonts belong to FreeType are. If you wnat support for
|  >SVg
|  >fonts - you need to write FreeType driver for them.
|
|  Please check out librsvg. It supports the <text> and <tspan> operators
| just fine using Pango and the Freetype backend to Pango.

It seems librsvg2 requres GTK+2.0, plus a lot of otherdependencies.
Doesn't sound like a *light* library.
I will try to complie GTK+2.0 and all required libs, and will let you know my 
opinion.
What is the current home URL for this lib? Do you have mailing list to discuss 
its bugs and features?

|
|  >So far, most apps were doing conversion "on their own".
|  >Developers' efforts were spreaded, and synergy is lost...
|  >It would be great if people from different projects can join efforts and
|  >develop just *one* library, which will do most of converion tasks (for
|  >vector
|  >formats)
|
|  I think that's what we're trying to do here.

What about to define common criterias for *unified vector format"?
Do you (and other people) think that SVG is ok as common format?
Should PostScript be treated as "legacy"? 
I recently asked questin on Freetype-devel mailing list, wether we should use 
(try to use) Hermite Splines, instead of Beziers, for fonts.
I think similar qustion is valid for common vector format.
PS is 20 years old. May be, we need something newer?.. :-)

|
|  Cheers,
|  Dom

-- 
Cheers,

Vadim Plessky


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