Pierre (Entries tagged as graphics)

Google summer of code, last day to apply!

nospam@example.com (Pierre) — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 01:26:49 +0200

You may have been in holidays in the past two weeks and have missed that PHP is again part of the Google Summer of Code . Check out our wiki, the PHP ideas page contains some good ideas. If you are a student, we’d welcome your application!

(You can join us on #php.pecl on EFNet, on our Internals mailing lists or in Freenode’s #gsoc for more general question about the eligibility, application, etc.)

Wind of change? sure but maybe not where we think

nospam@example.com (Pierre) — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 17:16:00 +0100

I was really surprised while reading the last post from Jonathan Schwartz.

wind of change

As I was not really happy with the way MySql dealt with a couple of things in the past two years, this last event does not really bring my trust in how MySql works with the PHP development team or more generally the direction than some companies try to give to PHP and their related products. It may change nothing to how many users see in MySql but I’m pretty sure it will change a lot the MySql strategy. I hope I’m wrong. But no matter what will happen, there is now a bigger room from true open source (by all means) databases like Postgresql.

I don’t have the time right now to comment furhter this news but… good thing, I may be more objective in a couple of days

short version: A coffee producer bought a dolphin

King thief

nospam@example.com (Pierre) — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 18:11:00 +0100

These guys rock:

I discover them while checking a nice little package on freshmeat. If you are in the St-Louis area and have the chance to see them live, go!

About the little php package, it is a nice antialiased circular arc implementation, if you ever need rounded corners

ps: yes, that’s coming in the extension as well, s…ooon

GD 2.0.36RC1 is out

nospam@example.com (Pierre) — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 16:48:00 +0100

The first release candidate for 2.0.36 has been released! Please test it and report any issue

German job opening

nospam@example.com (Pierre) — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 14:58:00 +0200

We have a full time position for a Web/UI designer for our opening office in Cologne. Are you looking for new exciting and innovative projects? Do you have first experiences in UI design?

Good knowledges of HTML/CSS and flash UI designs (professionally or not) are required. You don’t have to be an expert in CSS or Flash magics but knowing their limits and possibilities would help ;~~). Knowledge of JS is a good plus but not a requirement. English and German (fluent/native in one of them :~~) speakers only.

Interested? Drop me a mail with your resume! (pierre punkt dev at gmail punkt com

Dear lazy web, what do you use as PVR/HPTC for Kabel Deutschland Digital?

nospam@example.com (Pierre) — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 18:19:00 +0200

Kabel Deutschland has found a new way to force me to get their digital system, remove TV5 Monde from the standard offer g. It is now only available in the digital subscription. It is not that a problem as I can get a couple of more channels with the move and the price is not very high.

I thought it was a good moment to get a better PVR system than my badly configured linux box. But it is real pain to find a good receiver/recorder with a lan or USB port. Kabel D does not allow any device to have a way to export data, making them useless as HPTC systems… (humax, nokia DBOX or other similar systems). I don’t really care to copy my recorded movies or tv shows but I really hate to have twenty devices to watch tvs, dvd or listen to some audio streams…

It looks my only choice is to buy or build a complete HTPC. So far the dreambox seems to be the only one available around here (at a reasonable price). The good thing is that it runs under linux and the complete code is available (gpl) and supports twin tuners (cable, satellite or terrestrial):)

Does anyone have experiences with this device (like does the kabel D card works with their CI?)? Or know any good alternative?

Some requirements:

lan or wlan interface
USB port
dual tuners
internal HDD support

GD-2.0.35 has been released!

nospam@example.com (Pierre) — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 21:52:00 +0200

GD-2.0.35 has been released!

After five release candidates, 2.0.35 has been finally released. See the release announcement release notes for all the details. It contains numerous security related fixes, update is recommended.

On the good news side, I’m happy to announce that we now cooperate with Debian to create quality packages for GD library and the PHP extension. Kudo to Sean Finney to have made it possible. Stay tuned, I will post updates as soon as possible!

First release candidate for GD 2.0.35

nospam@example.com (Pierre) — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 11:59:00 +0100

The first release candidate for the upcoming GD 2.0.35 has been released yesterday. It is a bug fixes only. The more important fix is about two possible race conditions in the freetype cache implementation. One in the rendering (glyph_draw) and one during the cache shutdown.

You can see the complete list of changes in the issues tracker or in the NEWS file.

Documentation generators for C/C++ library or application

nospam@example.com (Pierre) — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 02:57:00 +0100

One of the priority for GD 2.1.0 is to improve the documentation. Not only for the readers but for the developers as well as the editors (there is one for now, Jeffrey Drake .

There is many documentation generators out there but only a few seems to be still maintained and to fit requirements:

Simple syntax, a documentation comment should not make the code less readable. It should obviously be readable by a human being (without parsing it)
At least two exports format, Latex and html are the dream team, but I can live with only HTML

Both of my nominees are well known. I never heard about "Natural Docs" before and I really like its syntax:

Let me try to summarize my feelings about each of them here. This is a non objective comparison, feel free to correct me if I say something stupid . If you know other tools or how I can customize any of these three to get the "perfect" documentation generation tools, please let me know.

I have to say that I did not ask the respective project authors, I only run some tests and read their respective documentations.

Robodoc:

Pros:

Output formats: HTML, XML DocBook, TROFF, ASCII, LaTeX or RTF format. You can virtually have whatever you want using of the default formats.
Powerful configuration (check the manuals, it is really impressive)

Cons:

The comment syntax is not very nice and concise, and it is really what keeps me away from Robodoc:

<br />
/****f* Analyser/Is_Pipe_Marker
 * <span class="caps">NAME</span>
 *   Is_Pipe_Marker
 * <span class="caps">FUNCTION</span>
 *   Check for &#8220;pipe&#8221; markers e.g. &#8220;|html &#8220;.
 * <span class="caps">SYNOPSIS</span>
 */<br />
static char        *Is_Pipe_Marker(
    char *cur_char,
    int *pipe_mode )<br />
/*
 * <span class="caps">RESULT</span>
 *   Pointer to the data to be piped to document or in case no pointers
 *   are found.
 * <span class="caps">SEE</span> <span class="caps">ALSO</span>
 *   RB_Check_Pipe
 * <span class="caps">SOURCE</span>
 */<br />
{<br />
...<br />

Doxygen:

Pros:

Widely used (that’s a good point when support is required)
Syntax relatively simple and readable (many syntax are available)

Cons:

I do not like its html output, list of files/classes/etc. do not speak to me or do not work well for C.

(there is other syntax available):

 
/*! \brief Brief description.
         Brief description continued.
 
  Detailed description starts here.
 
   \param a an integer argument.
   \param s a constant character pointer.
   \return The test results
   \sa Test(), ~Test(), testMeToo() and publicVar()
*/

Natural Docs:

Pros

I like its syntax, I cannot image a simpler one as there is none, it is like I would write it

"Cons"

only html as output and I do not have the time to hack something in perl to improve it

<br />
/*
   Function: Multiply</p>
 
   Multiplies two integers.
 
   Parameters:
 
      x &#8211; The first integer.
      y &#8211; The second integer.
 
   Returns:
 
      The two integers multiplied together.
 
   See Also:
 
      <Divide>
*/

And the winner is, for now: Natural Docs. But still, having only html is somehow limited. I would like other outputs like manpages or latex.

Using GD with DevC++

nospam@example.com (Pierre) — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 14:10:00 +0100

A couple of persons asked me about using libGD with DevC++ or if I support it (devcpp is based or use mingw/gcc). The windows binaries work like a charm with DevCpp/Mingw or VisualC.

As I’m too lazy to write long texts and take screen shots, I recorded a little video to show how to create a small console application on windows using DevC++. Check it out here. I used camstudio on a windowsXP running in my freshly updated VirtualBox.

GD 2.0.34 has been released!

nospam@example.com (Pierre) — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 18:54:00 +0100

GD 2.0.34 has been released!

It took a lot of work to get this version released. Version 2.0.34 is a bug-fix-only release (all known security issues have been fixed), and upgrade is strongly recommended. It is also my very first GD release (hopefully, the first of many to come), and marks the official freeze of the 2.0.x tree, only security-related fixes will be made on this tree from now on.

Please find the release announcement here.

It is a second birth for the libGD project. Its new home now has all tools needed to continue its growth in an organic way:

Public CVS (webcvs)
Issues tracker
Public mailing lists
IRC channel on freenode: #libgd
Wiki

If you are a maintainer of a language binding, I will be more than happy to hear your needs or to host your project if you are lacking the infrastructure to do so yourself. Many projects have begun to bundle or fork away from the main project, but I hope we will find a way to clean the general mess (years without releases did not help). In short, any feedback, requests, contributions or patches are welcome!

The future of the project is now looking way better than only a couple of months ago. We have already started to work on the next improvements, which will be included in the 2.1.0 release. Stay tuned!

Build cairo on windows, step #1

nospam@example.com (Pierre) — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 02:35:30 +0200

While trying to get the cairo (and pimp) PHP binding ready to be released, I finally sit down and port Wez build cscript to cairo. It still needs some cleanup, a nice summary message but it works already. I tested it with Visual C++ Express Edition but it should work with other versions as well.

My next goal is to add the tests (nmake tests) and fix the nmake install.

To use it, you need to create a directory structure similar to:

c:\ cairo

`-- cairo-1.2.4    `-- windows    `-- cairo.def    `-- buildconf.bat    `-- conf.bat `-- cairo_build    `-- include    `-- lib

Where “cairo-1.2.4” what the release archives, extract a recent release and add the missing directory and files:

windows directory, it contains all development files required to compile cairo with png, ps, pdf, freetype2 and win32 support
buildconf.bat, generates the configure.js script
conf.bat, convenient batch to call the configure script, modify it to fit your wishes

Run “buildconf.bat” only once or if you changed the scripts, it is the equivalent of buildconf/autogen on Unix.

Call configure using cscript:

 C:\cairobuild\cairo-1.2.4&gt;cscript /nologo configure.js --help ..Display the configure help..

Or use the conf.bat batch file.

You can fetch a complete Cairo 1.2.4 package here. The cairo_build contents is available here.

By default, the configure script tries to enable everything (w32, pdf or ps surface, ft2 support). You can disable each backend or option using —disable-backendname options (—disable-pdf to disable the PDF surface).

If you like to define additional paths for the libraries or includes, use the with-extra-includes and with-extra-libs. These options accept absolute path and will automatically add them. To change the location of the default “cairo_build” directory, use the with-cairo-build option.

Here is a nice screenshot

These scripts are the very first versions, they seem to work well for me. But don’t run away if you have many errors or if they don’t work at all. Leave me a comment or mail me.

I’m not sure if they should be available from the cairo site right now, they still require some tweaks. However, if some of you like to have them or to contribute/help/take the hand, let me know, I can put them in some public cvs/svn. Comments, contributions welcome

UPDATE 11/09

I fixed a possible issue with PDF and PS support, it should work way better now. The cairo_build_windows archive has been updated and a decent freetype2 is now included (from gnuwin32). The build system has been tested with VC++ Express and VC.net 2003. Also a configure.bat is now included, it is a simple “alias” for “cscript /nologo configure.js “. You can call it just like any real configure.

An VC7+ example project is available here. it uses the windows clock (from Writser Cleveringa) and store it as a PNG. It does not have any animation or fancy windows, I was too lazy to make it work. However this sample project gives all required details to use your fresh compiled cairo on windows. The second part is about using the PDF backend. The basket demo snippet is used.

Update 13/09

All backends work now, a dedicated page has been created and will be kept uptodate with the cairo git repository: cairo-win32. Results:

Downloads:

Development libs and includes, cairo_build_windows.zip
Cairo-1.2.4 ready to use package, cairo-1.2.4-win32.zip
Example project cairo_example_windows.zip

phpgd.com

nospam@example.com (Pierre) — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 02:37:53 +0100

In his news section, Dams introduces the “new” phpGD website, a site dedicated to PHP and GD. I have not heard about it until now and I am nicely surprised about this initiative.

There is a couple of nice scripts, and your contributions are welcome.

I will hang around the forums, it could be a niceway to get more feedbacks (good or bad :-), even if I try to focus on my vapourware

See you there!

phpGD

imagepng, take #2

nospam@example.com (Pierre) — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 21:19:46 +0100

Bernhard Seefeld was testing the new compression option for imagepng and was wondering why there is still a relative big difference in image sizes.

In my first attempt to create smaller images, I only allowed to change the compression, it was not sufficient to get really lite pictures.

After a short look to the libpng codebase (and the horrible imagick doc), I added a last argument to imagepng, the filtering mode. Here are the results, sorted by size (a.png is the source image):

<br />
18650 a.png<br />

<br />
18556 none.png<br />
18556 all.png<br />
24536 sub.png<br />
28727 up.png<br />
29095 paeth.png<br />
32788 default.png<br />
36658 avg.png<br />

I used this little script, if you like to test it:

<br />
<?php<br />
$im = imagecreatefrompng(&#8220;a.png&#8221;);<br />
imagesavealpha($im,true);<br />
imagepng($im, &#8220;default.png&#8221;, 9);<br />
imagepng($im, &#8220;none.png&#8221;, 9, PNG_NO_FILTER);<br />
imagepng($im, &#8220;sub.png&#8221;, 9, PNG_FILTER_SUB);<br />
imagepng($im, &#8220;up.png&#8221;, 9, PNG_FILTER_UP);<br />
imagepng($im, &#8220;avg.png&#8221;, 9, PNG_FILTER_AVG);<br />
imagepng($im, &#8220;paeth.png&#8221;, 9, PNG_FILTER_PAETH);<br />
imagepng($im, &#8220;all.png&#8221;, 9, PNG_ALL_FILTER);<br />
?><br />

I save the alpha channel as the source image has a transparent “background”, but it is not really relevant here

The option will be present from PHP 5.1.3 (or whatever will be the next 5.x release) have fun while saving your bandwidth

What's new in GD, 5.1.x, #2

nospam@example.com (Pierre) — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 09:30:00 +0100

With the png compression, I also forgot the couple of filters added in php5 some months ago. Like any additions after php 5.0, they have been added to the HEAD, which happens to 5.1.x now. The convolution I presented yesterday is one of them.

Continue reading "What's new in GD, 5.1.x, #2"