Re: ImageMagick/Graphicsmagick

[Harold L Hunt II <huntharo at msu dot edu>]

fedora@studio.imagemagick.org wrote:

> As the lead developer of ImageMagick I would like to clear up a few
> misconceptions being stated on this list.

How many developers have you still got?  There doesn't seem to be much 
evidence of other developers on the project anymore.

>   1. Harold L Hunt II says: This package [GraphicsMagick] will replace
>      ImageMagick for various reasons. One of those reasons is that the
>      GM folks are committed to provide ABI stability and proper version
>      numbers, whereas IM is not making such a commitment and has already
>      made various arbitrary changes to ABI version numbers.

We had a discussion on the cygwin-apps mailing list; unfortunately, the 
discussion might not have always had ImageMagick in the subject, so you 
might not be able to find all of the messages.  The gist of the 
discussion was that, regardless of stated intentions, the way that 
ImageMagick was handling ABI version numbers was going to cause problems 
on Cygwin.  Someone else can pipe in with the details if you ask again, 
but I was satisified with the results of the discussion.

>      This is something Bob Friensenhahn is trying to convince people of
>      but it is simply not true.  http://studio.imagemagick.org/ states
>      our project goal of: ImageMagick's focus is on performance,
> 		 minimizing bugs, and providing stable APIs and ABIs.  Bob Friensenhahn
>      does not speak for ImageMagick.  He tends to diminish ImageMagick in
>      various mailing lists I assume in order to promote his ImageMagick
>      clone project, GraphicsMagick.

Are we not adults capable of making our own decisions?  Bob had nothing 
to do with this discussion and he has nothing to do with the fact that 
there is a problem with the way that ImageMagick is handling library 
version numbers.

>   2. Daniel Reed says: GaphicsMagick is a feature-for-feature
>      replacement of ImageMagick.  This is simply not true.  GraphicsMagick
>      is missing many features that ImageMagick has and if you run
>      a program or script against the two you will in many cases get
>      different results.

Hasn't been a problem for us so far.  If you want to prove us wrong, 
you'd better be prepared to submit some step-by-step examples of how to 
generate such cases and describe why the differing results are 
meaningful.  Assuming that you do that, why should we care?  We've only 
had the ImageMagick package for less than a month and, quite frankly, it 
is easier to maintain the GraphicsMagick package because the build files 
don't create empty directories that I have to go back and delete by 
hand, among other things.

>   3. Daniel Reed says: I considered ImageMagick's to be votes for
>      GraphicsMagick.  Why vote at all if you are going to usurp the votes?
>      A vote for ImageMagick should remain with ImageMagick.  If you want
>      votes for GraphicsMagick have a separate vote.

Nope.  I packaged ImageMagick, then I found GraphicsMagick and was 
convinced (by the code, not rhetoric) that it is superior for our 
purposes.  I will not continue to package ImageMagick; I will only 
continue to package GraphicsMagick.

Don't come down on Daniel, accusing him of usurping other people.  I 
announced that I was pulling the ImageMagick pacage and would be 
replacing it with a functional equivalent named ImageMagick.  He handled 
the votes according to my announcement.

> If you choose to support GraphicsMagick instead of ImageMagick, fine.  However,
> base your decision on facts, not misconceptions.

No misconceptions here.  The real problem is that some of this 
discussion took place under subject lines like "Re: Pending Package List 
...", I believe.  The history is covered in our mailing list; our search 
engine doesn't find it, but Google might.  Happy reading.

Harold