[TYPO3-dev] PHP's extension "imagick" not used in TYPO3 CMS

[Helmut Hummel]

Hi Michael!

Michael Schams wrote:

> I always wondered, why TYPO3 CMS does not use PHP's native extension
> "imagick" [1] to create and modify images using the ImageMagick API, but
> executes ImageMagick's binaries from the operating system instead.
>
> The only two reasons I could think of is, 1) not every server setup has
> this PECL extension installed (by default), and 2) lack of resources to
> implement this :-)

Both true. If anything we should make use of a library which abstracts 
the concrete implementation of image transformation for us. Imagine 
might be a good choice, as the Neos folks already have experience with it.

Doing so would let the user choose a best fitting "driver" for image 
manipulation.


One last note on using a PHP extension: imagine you want to create a 
thumbnail of a 1GB PDF. It very likely could be that the PHP extensions 
needs to load up the whole file into memory to only create a thumbnail 
of the first page. This would mean you need to grant your PHP process 
 >1GB of memory just for image manipulation.

Kind regards,
Helmut

-- 
Helmut Hummel
Release Manager TYPO3 6.0
TYPO3 CMS Active Contributor, TYPO3 Security Team Member

TYPO3 .... inspiring people to share!
Get involved: typo3.org