unofficial mirror of bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org 
 help / color / mirror / code / Atom feed
From: Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com>
To: 14762@debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#14762: 24.3.50; hurdles getting Emacs to show images on MS Windows
Date: Mon, 1 Jul 2013 11:33:56 -0700 (PDT)	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <a574f97f-6f5a-4cb1-a6dc-1b2e0735ebc2@default> (raw)

A while back, with some advice from Eli, I had Emacs working with images
on MS Windows.  I recently got a new laptop, with Windows 7, so I had to
start over again, to get image support for Emacs.

FWIW, and at Eli's suggestion, here is some feedback about the hassles
of doing that, and a plea to find some way to have Emacs support for
showing images out of the box.  (Yes, the usual, common image types,
at least.)

1. Some comments about README.W32.  They occurred to me when reading it,
looking for info about getting support for images in Emacs.  README.W32
text is refixed by "> ":

>     Emacs can also support some other image formats with appropriate
>     libraries.  These libraries are all available as part of GTK
>     download for Windows (http://www.gtk.org/download/win32.php),

Which is what?  (What is GTK?)  "As part of" - does that mean that
downloading GTK, whatever it is, gives me _more_ than image support?
If so, do I need to do that, or can I somehow get just image support?

>     or from the GnuWin32 project.

Which is what? and where?  Same questions, to try to understand
what to download for image support.

BTW, the GnuWin summary page, here:
http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/summary.html
says this, giving the impression that GNU Emacs includes or at least
distributes GnuWin, which I don't think is the case (is it?):

  "Utilities and libraries provided by GnuWin, are used and
  distributed with packages such as GNU Emacs and KDE-Windows."
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

>   * GnuTLS support
> 
>     In order to support GnuTLS at runtime...

Well, yes, I can understand that GnuTLS support supports GnuTLS...

>   * libxml2 support
> 
>     In order to support libxml2 at runtime...

But what ARE GnuTLS and libxml2?  Why might a user want them?


2. I also went here, looking for info about how to add image support for
MS Windows:
http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/Other-useful-ports.html#Other-useful-ports

But that didn't really help much.  I do see that it lists various
image-support tools under the heading GnuWin32: Jpeg, GifLib,
LibPng, etc.

(The README.W32 does not say where (or even what) GnuWin32 is, does it?)

At the GnuWin32 site I see a page for GifLib, for example, but it was
not clear to me what to download and then what to do.  Should I download
the "Binaries" Zip from there?  And then what?  That GifLib page says
"You can also download the files from the GnuWin32 files page."  But
that page seems to have just a *setup.exe download.  Similarly for the
other image types.  It's not clear what to download and from where.  I
did not want to install more than just the needed image libraries
(dll's).

Yes, I realize that GNU Emacs and GnuWin32 are different.  If GNU Emacs
told users directly and clearly (1,2,3...) what to do to get image
support, then perhaps I wouldn't be fiddling with trying to understand
the GnuWin32 site.


3. IMHO, there could - should - be some guidance in the *Emacs manual*
about how to get image support for GNU Emacs, including on MS Windows.


4. Better - much better - would be to include image support in GNU Emacs
out of the box.  On MS Windows.  And that is what users, especially new
users, EXPECT, and SHOULD expect.


5. There was at least one other bug thread about this, #4367, but it
seems to have gone nowhere...  Still hoping that Emacs will step up to
the plate and DTRT for users when it comes to image support.






In GNU Emacs 24.3.50.1 (i686-pc-mingw32)
 of 2013-06-27 on ODIEONE
Bzr revision: 113205 dgutov@yandex.ru-20130627095155-f1lv1c7xf99g1sss
Windowing system distributor `Microsoft Corp.', version 6.1.7601
Configured using:
 `configure --prefix=/c/Devel/emacs/binary --enable-checking=yes,glyphs
 CFLAGS=-O0 -g3 LDFLAGS=-Lc:/Devel/emacs/lib
 CPPFLAGS=-Ic:/Devel/emacs/include'





             reply	other threads:[~2013-07-01 18:33 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 7+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2013-07-01 18:33 Drew Adams [this message]
2013-07-05 15:55 ` bug#14762: 24.3.50; hurdles getting Emacs to show images on MS Windows Drew Adams
2014-02-08  6:32 ` Lars Ingebrigtsen
2014-02-08  9:32   ` Eli Zaretskii
2014-02-08 10:31     ` Eli Zaretskii
2014-02-10  1:31   ` Drew Adams
2014-02-08  6:36 ` Lars Ingebrigtsen

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

  List information: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to=a574f97f-6f5a-4cb1-a6dc-1b2e0735ebc2@default \
    --to=drew.adams@oracle.com \
    --cc=14762@debbugs.gnu.org \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html

* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
  via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
Code repositories for project(s) associated with this public inbox

	https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git

This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for read-only IMAP folder(s) and NNTP newsgroup(s).