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

[Jose Antonio Guerra]

Hi Daniel				

> 
> M.Stucki and me have just been brainstorming about a possible solution
> to the ongoing troubles with the ImageMagick-Package.
> 

Hmm.. I thought that IM 4.2.9 was almost perfect...  or not?

> 
> We have come up with the idea to define an interface for an
> image-processing class. This class can then be implemented using IM, or
> another class using GraphicsMagic or some other library.
> 

I've never heard about GraphicsMagick before. I've just browsed its website and sounds like real good stuff!

> These classes could be implemented as a special kind of extension. TYPO3
> could then have a list of available image-processing-classes it can use
> to scale/transform/... images. If one class fails to do an operation or
> just has not implemented it, TYPO3 could automagically let another class
> in the list perform the task.
> 
> One major problem is the fact that right now it is possible to pass
> parameters to ImageMagick via TS. That means, there is no
> abstraction-layer between end-user and the underlying image-processing
> library. For this case there should be a fallback-image-processing class
> which works the way t3lib_stdgraphic does it right now. This could be
> removed in a future release of Typo3 (v5?) when nobody makes use of
> these features anymore.
> 

All architechtural  changes should be done while mantaining backwards compatibility... I'm sure people won't like modifying its code to adapt to a new T3 version. But I think that an extension or a core option would be nice to implement this.

> We have thought about making a project out of this. I will make a first
> draft of a possible interface, parametrization + architecture tomorrow.
> 

Great! 

As I have done too much TS imaging code for website projects I know that there are some things that should be far better than the actual code. That 8-bit internal processing of GD 1 is one of them (horrible), but there are a lot more. Write that draft and I will be pleased to add some lines ;D

One first idea: Would it be possible to get rid of GD and the IM executables and make all the T3 image processing through the PHP GraphicsMagick API? In theory, it should give more speed and flexibility.

> If anybody is interested to help us coding, you're very welcome...

I don't know if I will have time to code this but I'll try to! 
> 
> But first, let's discuss the issue!

Regards,

Jose