[Typo3-debian] GD and ImageMagick Packages for Debian and the "LZW" problem

[Alexander Schories]

Dear Typo3 and Debian Experts,  :-)

 
 
i am running Debian testing/unstable with Apache2, PHP 4.3.X (with modules
php-GD2 4.3.2+rc3-2 and php-imagick 0.9.7-1.2) and Imagemagick 5.5.7.9-1.1
("standalone").
 

Now please let me ask you follwing questions:
 
A)
Those debian-packages do not support LZW compression, e.g. for GIFs, because
of legal license reasons. I can, somehow ;), understand that debian itself
shall be free of third party rights. But are there any recent, non-free
packages available or do i really have to compile from source (with a lot of
hazzle to get debian package management officially "know" these
self-compiled packages then..) on my own, just to get LZW-support? Any
non-debian-package / manual installation would mean debian package
management not to know about it and therefore possibly causing dependency or
installation problems for other packages later on...

B)
To circumvent this for the moment, i switched typo3 right now into "use
always png instead of gif-mode". But will Typo3/Imagemagick/GD2 at least be
able to *read* lzw-compressed GIFs (to maybe later on convert them to png or
similar) or do i have to supply *only* lzw-free files then? In other words:
Does "without lzw support" really mean not even reading those files?
 
C)
Would be the fork of ImageMagick called "graphicsmagic" be of any use here?
I heard about it. Even that it`s not natively supported by typo3. However,
if it would successfully battle with my LZW problem, sure it would be worth
a try. ;-)
 

Thank you! 8)
 
best regards
 
 
 
Alexander Schories
Tuebingen, Germany