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Why is GraphicsMagick [1] not a more popular alternative? [1] http://www.graphicsmagick.org/ http://www.graphicsmagick.org/
by AceJohnny2 6y ago
Why is GraphicsMagick [1] not a more popular alternative?
[1] http://www.graphicsmagick.org/ http://www.graphicsmagick.org/
- ashtonkem 6y agoSame reason any legacy dependency remains; the cost of replacement is higher than the cost of maintenance.
- AceJohnny2 6y agoIt's meant to be a drop-in replacement, the cost of replacement should be negligible.
- yareally 6y agoThere probably still exist some weird edge cases introduced by imagemagick that the developer(s) behind graphicsmagick haven't accounted for. That is, should graphicsmagick account for quirks introduced by imagemagick? If it's meant to truly be a drop-in replacement versus one with some strings attached, I would say the answer is yes. Otherwise, you can't easily just drop it into a system and let it run. Systems built with libraries around long enough as imagemagick likely have all sorts of workarounds built in over the years for that kind of behavior and any deviation from imagemagick might break things more than one expects. We've all been bitten by libraries that claim backwards compatibility with previous versions, only to find out there's breaking changes in some non-trivial use cases the library devs didn't consider. Add those complications on top of switching to a library that is supposed to be a drop in replacement and it can get pretty messy for what seemed like a trivial task.
- wtracy 6y agoBoth projects are moving fairly fast, and regularly adding new features that are not shared. The last time I made heavy use of ImageMagick/GraphicsMagick, I was suprised how often I would find a feature present in one and not the other (often things like drawing gradients). And it's not like one has a superset of the other's features: I once painted myself into a corner and created a project that depended on both ImageMagick and GraphicsMagick.
- LeoPanthera 6y agoFormat support lags. For example, it does not currently support HEIF.
- arthurcolle 6y agoalmost nothing supports HEIF. consider: most state-run web apps that need an image upload for personal ID images, or anything else. Ugh, this happens frequently for me and just frustrates me to no end. EDIT: I suppose this is why you're saying ImageMagick is king right now.
- LeoPanthera 6y agoWell, yes. It happened only recently, but ImageMagick does indeed support HEIF. :)
- shmerl 6y agoIs it a fork?
- runxel 6y agoNever heard of it either, but the homepage provides some info: > GraphicsMagick is originally derived from ImageMagick 5.5.2 as of November 2002 but has been completely independent of the ImageMagick project since then.