[TYPO3-dev] [rfc] Support for ImageMagick PHP module ?

[Jigal van Hemert]

Hi,

On 1-2-2012 13:33, Michael Stucki wrote:
> I think nobody will object to this, the reason why it's not there is
> simply that nobody needed it (and I expect it to be less powerful than
> using the stock binary).

Imagick and Gmagick are PECL extensions and are not bundled with PHP. We 
can only speculate about the reasons for not including support for it in 
the core, but it might have something to do with the fact that the first 
stable release of Imagick appeared in 2007 and that Gmagick is still in 
beta.

Both are wrappers around the IM and GM binaries [1] [2] and have loads 
of functions; in fact you need the binaries to make Imagick an Gmagick 
work. The main reasons for hosters to offer these instead of the 
executables is of course that they can block functions like exec() and 
feel a little safer (I won't argue if that is correct or not).

> So go ahead if you think it's worth it, but I honestly recommend you to
> consider changing the hoster instead (because you will not only miss
> ImageMagick but also unzip, pdftotext, etc.)

I agree with Michael about changing hoster; if you are not allowed to 
call exec() chances are that you won't have other necessary features 
(enough memory or CPU resources, cron jobs, ssh, ...) to use TYPO3 in a 
comfortable way.

About adding support for Imagick/Gmagick, I still feel that building a 
general graphics library for the core with handlers for GD, IM, GM, 
Imagick, Gmagick, ... would be the best way for the future. Adding 
support for Imagick/Gmagick in the core directly would mean extra checks 
all over the place and would make image processing slower overall.

[1] http://www.php.net/imagick
[2] http://www.php.net/gmagick

-- 
Kind regards / met vriendelijke groet,

Jigal van Hemert.