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To: "'Thomas Boutell'" <boutell@boutell.com>,
	<internals@lists.php.net>
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2006 12:45:14 +0100
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Subject: RE: [PHP-DEV] gd development as part of php.net
From: jared.williams1@ntlworld.com ("Jared Williams")
References: <Pine.LNX.4.61.0608301804400.21656@boutell.com>

 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Thomas Boutell [mailto:boutell@boutell.com] 
> Sent: 31 August 2006 00:17
> To: internals@lists.php.net
> Subject: [PHP-DEV] gd development as part of php.net
> 
> Unfortunately there hasn't been any movement on this since I handed
> it over to Pierre in April.
> 
> Obviously, since I sat on PHP myself for a really long time, I am not
> pointing the finger at Pierre here. I'm still the champion
> gd-neglect-ster by a LONG shot.
> 
> However, I'm wondering if anyone else is eager to help him make a
> new release of gd happen as part of the PHP project.
> 
> If necessary, I could go looking for a new maintainer again, though
> that surely wouldn't be fun and I'd prefer almost anything else. (:
> 
> * * *
> 
> On a related note, I'm wondering why PHP doesn't seem to have any
> official relationship with the ImageMagick project - Which offers
> an unofficial PHP extension of its own.
> 
> Though gd has been good to me over the years, I'm not going to sit 
> here and pretend gd has a modern graphics API. It doesn't. gd has a
> very 1989 API, full of integer-oriented assumptions and
> less-than-smooth implementations of graphics primitives, written
> by a guy with no formal background in graphics algorithms (me).
> And that's always going to be visible in the quality of its output,
> short of a total core rewrite and API redesign.
> 
> The good thing about gd was always the simple API - but a simple
> API at the C level doesn't necessarily help anymore when the
> end user isn't coding in C anyway. And ImageMagick has a 
> floating-point, vector-oriented API that can do a whole lot more.
> With a coder-friendly "MagickWand" API that gives it simplicity
> approaching gd, especially when used from languages like PHP.
> 
> Also, the ImageMagick license appears to be GPL-compatible
> and making-money-compatible:
> 
> http://www.imagemagick.org/script/license.php
> 
> So, at the expense of my own site traffic perhaps, why the outdated
> gd API and not ImageMagick in the official PHP builds?

There is a magickwand extension for PHP.
http://www.magickwand.org/download/php/
I was involved in getting the windows builds of it made, until the lead
familiarised himself with Win32/VC.

The intention was to get it on pecl at some point.

But the lead developer has, to my understanding, been too busy.

Its quite a massive API. I think there are ~477 functions wrapped an available
to be used in PHP. Which obviously is going to create huge load on
documentation/bugs etc.

Jared