Magick++ News

This file was last updated on August 18, 2005.

Please note that this file records news for the associated development branch and that each development branch has its own NEWS file.

Significant changes associated with GraphicsMagick 1.2 (not yet released)

Security fixes:

- Fixes for CERT security alert TA04-217A described at "http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/techalerts/TA04-217A.html".
- AVI, BMP, & DIB security fixes.
- PSD security fixes.
- P7 format security fix.
- Implementation has replaced usage of strcpy, strcat, and strncat with the more security conscious strlcat and strlcpy.

Bug fixes:

- The configure script now searches for a web browser in the order mozilla, firefox, and finally netscape.
- When the user specifies the -units option, the current image resolution values are now re-scaled to match the new units.
- Properly determine Ghostscript font location for Ghostscript 8.0 and later.
- GraphicsMagick now successfully builds and passes all tests under Digital Unix 5.1, using the vendor compiler.
- Ghostscript sometimes displays an error message and fails, yet it returns a success error code to GraphicsMagick. Verify that Ghostscript has updated the output file before attempting to use it.
- Fixed a configure script syntax error when testing for trio.
- When requesting a list of formats, all of the modules in the module search path are considered. Previously only the modules in the same directory as the LOGO module were listed.
- Ensure that an image clip mask is respected by the negate algorithm.
- The BMP writer was sometimes writing incorrect BMP v4 files.
- Support reading and writing large PCX files.
- The Red Hat source RPM was failing to install the *-config scripts with execute permissions.
- Fixed a bug which could cause possible truncation while cloning the image cache.
- Ensure that MIFF files indicate the compression which was actually used.
- Properly handle errors from libtiff so that corrupted images are not output.
- Fix for stripped-TIFF reader. Handle extra samples in scanline TIFFs.
- JBIG writer was writing empty files for some libjbig releases.
- Improved handling of corrupt GIF files.
- Handle large SUN format images.
- For the gmdisplay program, ensure that only RGB data is sent to Windows.
- Memory leak fixes.
- PDF writer is fixed so that Ghoscript 8.5 doesn't warn about the output.
- Fixed a infinite loop bug in the XWD reader.

Feature improvements:

- LZW compression is now enabled by default.
- If gm is executed under a traditional alternate name (e.g. convert), it will invoke the appropriate sub-command. This allows use of hard links, symbolic links, or just copying 'gm' to the desired sub-command name in order to achieve 100% ImageMagick 5.5.2 utility compatibility.
- Provide the --enable-magick-compat option when configuring to install ImageMagick utilities compatibility links.
- Identify -verbose output includes normalized (0.0-1.0) statistics.
- Identify and convert now print "pixels per second" rates to help evaluate performance.
- Added the identify +ping option to force reading the complete file.
- The display program now supports the +progress option to disable any visual progress indication (and hourglass cursor) while loading images.
- Support writing grayscale TGA files.
- Provide explicit support for Rec 601 and Rec 709 grayscale spaces.
- Include some support for a log RGB space based on the 2.048 density range as defined for the Cineon Digital Film System.

Coder additions/improvements:

- Replaced existing DPX "support" with all-new DPX support conforming to the SMPTE 268M-2003 standard.
- TIFF coder is completely re-written. Now supports reading and writing RGB, CMYK, and grayscale, scanline-oriented TIFF images with arbitrary (1 to 32 bits) depth. Includes support for tiled TIFF, floating point TIFF, LogLuv TIFF, arbitrary depths, and associated alpha.
- TIFF coder now supports retrieving and saving XMP profiles.
- Support 32-bit raw RGB images.
- Support 32-bit raw CMYK images.
- Support 32-bit raw gray images.
- JP2 coder reads images in YCBCR colorspace and retrieves an embedded ICC ICM color profile if present.

API enhancements:

- Added ExportImageChannel() and ImportImageChannel() APIs to support exporting and importing pixel regions with an arbitary range of (1 to 32) bits per quantum.
- Added image leveling methods for Magick++.

Performance improvments:

- The DispatchImage() and ConstituteImage() functions incorporate special case code for BGR, BGRO, BGRP, RGB, RGBO, and I formats (8 bit only) in order to improve performance dramatically.
- When writing very large JPEG images, don't enable Huffman compression since doing so requires libjpeg to buffer the entire image in memory.
- When using the 'identify' -verbose option, -verbose must be specified twice in order to obtain the color count. This makes normal use of -verbose much faster.

Windows-specific improvements/changes:

- For the MinGW and Cygwin builds, the Magick++ library is forced to build as a static library since otherwise C++ exceptions don't work.
- Determine location of Ghostscript fonts only once in order to improve performance.
- Updated LCMS to version 1.14.
- Updated Jasper library to version 1.701.0.
- Updated libpng to 1.2.8.
- Updated zlib to 1.2.3.
- Libtiff updated to support LZW compression.
- Use GlobalMemoryStatusEx(), if available, to determine how much physical memory is available. Important for large-memory machines.
- Fixed NTreaddir() so that it does not write beyond its buffer.
- Fixed opendir() emulation function so it can't overwrite the stack.
  - FlashPIX library sources are no longer distributed in the Windows source package and building FlashPIX is disabled by default. FlashPIX may still be built by adding the library (separately distributed).

Significant changes associated with GraphicsMagick 1.1 (Released April 4, 2004)

Bug fixes:

- Semaphore fix which is necessary for proper multi-threaded operation.
- Configure script fix to ensure that -lfpx is not supplied to the C compiler during subsequent tests since this fails on some systems.
- Fix for East and West gravity computations.
- System error reports (errno) associated with an exception are now correctly obtained from the context existing when the exception was thrown rather than the context of the reporting function.
- JNG encoder fix. Files were being written with incorrect alpha_sample_value in the header. These can be repaired by reading them into GM 1.1 and rewriting them.
- XPM fix to module registration.
- PSD fix for index calculation when QuantumDepth>8.
- Validate that geometry specifications only include allowed characters.
- SGI fix to save compression type while writing.
- EXIF attributes were not being retrieved when requested.
- Fix for bug when reading an image via a user-provided file descriptor.
- The reported image magick string is now always that of the original input file (it was sometimes being reported as the format produced by an intermediate delegate program).
- Fixes to color profiling of CMYK images.
- Memory leak fixed in DrawClipPath().
- Arc drawing is fixed.
- Command-line parsing bug under Linux due to Linux's sscanfs inability to parse strings like "0x1" as "%fx%f" is fixed.
- Scaling of 5 and 6-bit colors was slightly incorrect in BMP, AVI, DIB, and TIM datastreams.
- GM utility now reports an error rather than silently returning if an unsupported sub-command is provided.
- TIFF coder was writing 16-bit per sample RGB images incorrectly on little-endian CPUs.

Performance improvements:

- Texture tiling is now 7X faster.
- Color profile processing speed improvements for colormapped images.

Utilities enhancements:

- For Unix, 'gm version' now includes a dump of the configure and build parameters.
- Logging of thrown exceptions is now supported. Use '-debug exception'. This is useful to learn when and where errors are reported.
- The -define option is added in order to support supplying additional options to coders without needing to add additional command line options or structure members.
- The output of 'gm identify -verbose' now provides a nice dump of EXIF data.
- The -sampling-factor option now accepts as many HxV pairs as there are JPEG components. Omitted ones default to 1x1.
- The convert and montage commands now support an -operator command to perform arithmetic and bitwise operations on specified image channels.

Coder additions/improvements

- The META coder supports wide characters for the IPTC and 8BIM formats.
- The XTRN coder now supports wide characters.
- An "IMAGE" coder is provided which provides access to a large number of images (derived from XFig) suitable for use as patterns, or as test images.
- The "PATTERN" coder now returns an image pattern tiled to size (equivalent results to TILE:IMAGE:pattern). This is for ImageMagick compatibility.
- The CINEON coder now supports reading and writing images in CINEON "CIN" linear gray and RGB formats. The read support is still very weak, but it works for common images.
- The JPEG coder now estimates the original JPEG quality and sampling factors and will reuse these options when writing JPEG if the image is of the same type and the option "-define JPEG:preserve-settings" is supplied.
- The JPEG-2000 coder now supports all Jasper library arguments using command line syntax similar to '-define jp2:rate=0.5'.
- Reading and writting compressed SVG (SVGZ) is now supported.
- The TXT coder now observes depth when writing.
- The TIFF coder now outputs colormapped images with 1, 2, 4, and 8 bits per sample in order to provide much smaller file sizes for images with very few colors.
- Many TIFF coder enhancements. Now reads colormapped and grayscale images at arbitrary (even odd) bits-per-sample sizes. Now properly supports an opacity channel (at any bits-per-sample value) for grayscale images. Bilevel grayscale images are treated similar to any other grayscale image unless CCITT FAX3/FAX4 compression is requested. Now allows the user to specify an arbitrary bits-per-sample value for grayscale images (even odd values) using "-define tiff:bits-per-sample=value". Now automatically stores the image as TrueColor RGB pixels if the image compression is set to JPEG. TIFF files are now written in using the TIFF library's default endian order rather than always big endian.
- The WPG coder now renders embedded WMFs.
- The PS3 coder is completely re-written to work much better and support more features (see ChangeLog).

Code structure enhancements:

- Error handling has been improved and validated through testing. Some errors were being lost, unnecessarily ignored, or reported as something else entirely.
- The number of error text messages to be maintained has been reduced by consolidating similar messages.
- The memory allocator functions have been replaced with similar macros in order to eliminate warnings with GCC 3.3, avoid accidentally casting away const, and allow memory debuggers to report memory allocations and frees against the correct functions. The previously-used functions remain in the library for the purpose of compatibility.
- <magick/xwindow.h> no longer depends on magick_config.h defines.
- The text string localization code has been replaced with a simpler version written by Bill Radcliffe.
- Added key,value "map" APIs (somewhat similar to C++'s <map>) for internal use.

API enhancements:

- Incorporated John Cristy's Wand API's in a new GraphicsMagickWand library.
- API definition is no longer dependent on types which vary in size (e.g. size_t) depending on large file compilation options. This means that applications may now be compiled without any special large file options and still work properly with the library.
- Thrown exceptions (ExceptionInfo structure) now include source file, source line, function name, and current system error number.
- The GetMagickInfoArray() function is added to replace use of GetMagickInfo() for code which needs to access the coder list. This is necessary since invoking GetMagickInfo() may re-order the coder list, causing problems for code which traverses the list. Using GetMagickInfo() to access individual list elements is safe.
- Added the CopyException function to support copying exception info from one structure to another.
- Added the ReplaceImageInList function to replace an image in an image list.
- Added the DrawPeekGraphicContext function to access the current DrawInfo structure in the drawing context stack. Use of this function is not recommended since it voilates proper programming practices. It is added to support the Wand API's.
- GetImageDepth() now returns an integral value between 1 and QuantumDepth and is no longer limited to the values 8, 16, and 32.
- SetImageDepth() supports setting the image modulus depth to any integral value between 1 and QuantumDepth. This effects the effective numeric precision, not the storage depth, since the quantum storage type is still a Quantum.
- GetImageChannelDepth() supports retrieving the modulus depth for a specified channel.
- SetImageChannelDepth() supports setting the modulus depth for a specified channel.
- ProfileImage is updated to handle alpha channels and grayscale images.
- Added GetImageProfile() to retrieve a CMS profile from an image.
- Added SetImageProfile() to attach a CMS profile to an image without adjusting the image pixels.
- Added DeleteImageProfile() to remove a CMS profile from an image.
- ConstituteImage() and DispatchImage() now support 'T' (transparency), 'O' (opacity), and 'P' (pad) options.
- CompositeImage() now supports CopyCyanCompositeOp, CopyMagentaCompositeOp, CopyYellowCompositeOp, and CopyBlackCompositeOp, composition operators.
- GetColorHistogram() obtains a color histogram for the image.
- QuantumOperatorImage() and QuantumOperatorRegionImage() support arithmetic and bitwise operations on specified image channels.
- The semaphore.h header is no longer installed or included in the API headers since these functions are private interfaces.
- Configure using --enable-symbol-prefix or define PREFIX_MAGICK_SYMBOLS to use the C preprocessor to prefix all library symbols with "Gm". This prevents library symbol conflicts with other libraries.

PerlMagick fixes:

- Adjusted a number of function option names so that they match the documentation.
- Memory leak fixed.
- Reading files (e.g. GIF) via a file descriptor is fixed.

Build improvements:

- The TRIO library may be used to provide a replacement for vsnprintf if the C library doesn't provide it. This improves security on old systems.
- Configure only configures for C & C++ languages.
- Configure now does a better job of figuring out how to build a thread-safe library across multiple operating systems.
- Configure incorporates a new mmap() test which tests the functionality which is needed so that mmap() is not unnecessarily rejected on a number of systems. This improves performance for large files on those systems.
- Configure/build fixes for IBM's AIX operating system.

Windows-specific improvements:

- The static install package now uses the "uninstalled" configuration so that it does not depend on the Windows registry in order to run. This allows files from the static install package to be copied to another computer without running an installer.
- The executable search path is extended at run-time to include the directory where the CORE DLLs reside in order to ensure that they are found.
- Adding the -t option to VisualMagick configure enables building all of the coders into one library in order to save build time and simplify linkage.
- The XTRN coder now supports wide characters.
- LCMS library updated to version 1.10.
- GMDisplay displays a checkerboard pattern behind transparent images.
- Support is provided for issuing log messages to the Windows standard logging system.
- Project files are now provided for use with Borland C++ Builder 6.0.
- Updated LCMS version to 1.12.
- Updated FreeType version to 2.1.5.
- Updated JBIG-KIT to version 1.5.
- Updated libpng to version 1.2.5.
- Updated libwmf to version 0.2.8.2.
- Updates zlib to version 1.2.1.
- ActivePerl 5.8.1 Build 807 now supported.
- GraphicsMagick now compiles using Visual Studio .NET 2003.

Significant changes associated with GraphicsMagick 1.0 (Released in May, 2003)

GraphicsMagick support services:

- Master web site at "http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/".
- Mailing lists, bug tracking, and forums available via "http://sourceforge.net/projects/graphicsmagick/".
- CVSWeb via "http://cvs.graphicsmagick.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/".
- CVS via cvs.graphicsmagick.org (find instructions at "http://www.graphicsmagick.org/www/cvs.html").
- FTP via "ftp://ftp.graphicsmagick.org/pub/GraphicsMagick".

Project maintenance improvements:

- ChangeLog conforms to the GNU standard and all CVS commits include useful log messages.
- CVS commit messages posted to graphicsmagick-commit mail list.
- CVS commit messages contain CVSWeb URL references.

Footprint changes from ImageMagick:

- Library -lMagick renamed to -lGraphicsMagick.
- Library -lMagick++ renamed to -lGraphicsMagick++.
- Utilities consolidated into a single 'gm' utility (e.g. use 'gm convert').
- Script Magick-config renamed to GraphicsMagick-config.
- Script Magick++-config renamed to GraphicsMagick++-config.
- Headers installed under ${PREFIX}/include/GraphicsMagick.
- PerlMagick namespace renamed from "Image::Magick" to "Graphics::Magick".
- Pkgconfig files GraphicsMagick.pc and GraphicsMagick++.pc are installed in $libdir/pkgconfig to assist pkg-config users.
- Coder modules installed to lib/GraphicsMagick-1.0/modules-Q8/coders.
- Filter modules installed to lib/GraphicsMagick-1.0/modules-Q8/filters.

Many performance enhancements:

- Default QuantumDepth is 8 since this is adequate for most purposes and more efficient than 16.
- The Magick++ demo (compiled with QuantumDepth=8 and -O2) runs about 1.8X faster under SPARC/Solaris than the same demo with ImageMagick 5.5.4.
- Colorspace transformations are much faster.
- Grayscale/monochrome image handling is much faster.
- PseudoClass image handling is faster.
- Text annotations using FreeType are much faster.
- Image file I/O is much faster.
- RLE-compressed MIFF reading much faster.

Code structure enhancements:

- All utility support functions moved to magick/command.c in order to significantly reduce link dependencies, allowing statically-linked programs to be smaller.
- Use of MogrifyImage() elminated except for by utilities.
- Re-builds due to changes to <magick/image.h> reduced by splitting the header into multiple headers.
- ISO C '99 typedefs (gm_int16_t, gm_uint16_t, gm_int32_t, gm_uint32_t, gm_int64_t, gm_uint64_t) are available for use.

Feature enhancements:

- Module loader always enabled for shared builds to allow extension.
- Loading of arbitrary filter modules (via -process option) supported under Unix as well as Windows.
- SVG coder allows specifying size and initial background color.
- JPEG-2000 coder (JP2) updated to work with Jasper 1.7.
- HWB and HSL image colorspace translation support.
- JNG/MNG/PNG format support tracks ImageMagick version.
- BMP encoder can write 16-color indexed BMPs now as well as 2-color BMPs (not restricted to monochrome).
- TIFF decoder now includes optimized support for tiled and stripped TIFF.
- The -random-threshold option (RandomThresholdImage()) is added to threshold an image to bilevel using random thresholding.

Major bug fixes:

- 100% successful test completion at all quantum depths (8/16/32).
- A temporary file management subsystem is added to ensure that all temporary files are removed before program exit. Temporary files are created and used in a secure fashion to avoid the possibility that a "trojan" temporary file (e.g. a symbolic link, or a file containing unsafe content) is created before a delegate has the chance to write to it. The environment variable MAGICK_TMPDIR allows the user to specify where temporary files are created without altering where other programs create their temporary files. Temporary filenames are created in 8+3 format to hopefully be more acceptable to ralcgm.
- When dithering is disabled, don't dither when converting to a PseudoClass, grayscale, or monochrome image. Disabling dithering may cause these translations to be much faster.
- PICON format works with BLOBs.
- No longer removes input file when pinging a FlashPIX file.
- Arc drawing and texture fill fixes from ImageMagick.
- Sample, scale and affine fixes from ImageMagick.
- MIFF colormaps are now scaled properly while reading.
- CMYK translation works for QuantumDepth=32.
- ConstituteImage now works properly for grayscale images.
- Built-in tilde expansion and filename globbing now works properly.
- InitializeMagick now registers signal handlers to ensure that resources are released before program exit. This helps avoid temporary file leaks due to the user using "CONTROL-C".
- The installed <magick/magick_config.h> header now only contains the few definitions required by the API headers. This should significantly reduce or eliminate conflicts with other package headers.

Windows platform enhancements:

- Configure updated for Visual C++ 7.0.
- OLE object (ImageMagickObject) re-written to work with Visual C++ 7.0
- New function, CropImageToHBITMAP(), to return a region of the image as a Windows HBITMAP.
- Use vsnprintf to format strings under Windows (safer).

On November 19, 2002, GraphicsMagick was created as a fork of ImageMagick, several days before the ImageMagick 5.5.2 release.

The objectives of GraphicsMagick are to:

- Use an open development model.
- Encourage new developers to join the project.
- Avoid unnecessary source code "churn".
- Establish and preserve a stable API.
- Use efficient coding practices which result in fast code.
- Improve memory efficiency.
- Use a release process which assures a working product.
- Maintain an accurate ChangeLog.

Copyright (C) 2003 GraphicsMagick Group

This program is covered by multiple licenses, which are described in Copyright.txt. You should have received a copy of Copyright.txt with this package; otherwise see http://www.graphicsmagick.org/www/Copyright.html.

Copyright © GraphicsMagick Group 2002, 2003, 2004