Re: Compiling emacs 22 on ubuntu 7.0.4

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Jan Djärv <jan.h.d@swipnet.se> writes:

> Richard Stallman skrev:
>>     > If some image libraries that ought to be present for a proper build of
>>     > Emacs are missing, is it really good for Emacs to compile without
>>     > those features?  Or would it be better to get error messages
>>     > and tell the user to install those development packages?
>>     >   
>>
>>     Another way to solve these problems would be to use ppm files for the
>>     color icons, since ppm support is built in to Emacs.
>>
>> The problem I am talking about is not just about icons.
>> Emacs ought to support various graphics formats,
>> if their libraries are installed.  If they are not installed,
>> why should Emacs build without complaint and then lack the
>> functionality?  I think it's a mistake.
>
> I have machines where no libpng or lib(un)gif are installed.  But I
> don't need that functionallity in Emacs.  So why should Emacs reuire
> those libraries? libXpm is another matter, it is needed to see color
> icons.

png is the default graphics format for preview-latex
<URL:http://www.gnu.org/software/auctex/preview-latex.html>.  It is
not uncommon for users to report problems with selfcompiled Emacs
variants.

I don't mind being able to specify --without-libpng and/or
--without-libgif, but the default behavior makes it somewhat too easy
to overlook that one is not generating a fully-capable Emacs for a
given platform.

-- 
David Kastrup