[A] External GIF support [Request for Comment]
APPROVE
Redirected discussion to xemacs-beta, this needs checking IMO.
Specifically, people on Windows, and non-Linux non-*BSD Unix which
might not have giflib available, or not have it where Jerry thinks you
should have it. :-) (Note you should wait a bit before updating as
Jerry hasn't committed yet.)
Removing the internal support seems a bit drastic. Why not leave it
in for say six months, but completely #ifndef USE_INTERNAL_GIF'ed out
(and with a comment saying "if nobody reports a need by 2010/03/01,
please remove this obsolete code"? If somebody wants to get running
with GIF in a hurry but doesn't have an immediately accessible giflib,
they can just add a
#define USE_INTERNAL_GIF 1
to src/config.h by hand. No need to autoconfiscate this
"USE_INTERNAL_GIF" hack.
Jerry James writes:
PATCH 21.5
The GIF patents have expired. There's no reason to avoid using an
external GIF library anymore. I would like to throw out our internal
GIF support, because the source files have no license information in
them. They are part of the GPLv3 blocker list.
As it turns out, the source files we are using were forked from
giflib, which is commonly used to supply GIF support (Emacs uses it,
for example). However, we've missed out on further development of
that library. The library is currently distributed with an MIT
license, so our internal GIF support is probably okay, but I'd rather
let someone else maintain the code.
This patch removes the internal GIF support code and attempts to find
and use giflib for GIF support. Lightly tested, but more feedback is
welcome.
--
Jerry James
http://www.jamezone.org/
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