[Typo3-dev] Image Processing API - getting rid of IM

[Martin T. Kutschker]

Daniel Brün wrote:
> Hi folks!
> 
> M.Stucki and me have just been brainstorming about a possible solution 
> to the ongoing troubles with the ImageMagick-Package.

Good, but...

Typo3 uses currently a mixture of ImageMagick and GD/GD2.

Typo3 performs varios classes of actions with images

* format conversion (eg PNG->JPEG)
* resizing/resampling
* effect processing (gray scaling, composition, etc)
* text processing (ie apllying of text onto an image)

AFAIK, there will arise the problem that not all "image libraries" will 
support all of the described functions.

One approach could be to define sub-APIs for the image-API, so eg I 
could do format conversions with GD, but text processing with 
ImageMagick, etc

The above solution has the disadvantage that chaining of operations 
becomes complicated. Possibly a high number of temporary files will be 
created.
AFAIK this is already the case but I thought it might be interesting to 
use PHP extensions and in-memory image-processing (eg with GD or the PHP 
version of ImageMagick).

Anyway I'm all for it. But please let's do stuff right. IMHO there is no 
point in being 100% (TS) backwards compatible as the current API is 
highly ImageMagick orientated. Better create a new API and make stdimg 
(trlib) a wrapper for the new stuff.

Masi