Building with image support

Building with image support

[Eric Lilja]

Hello, I've been building emacs on windows for a few year now but I have 
always built it without image support. Anyway, I grew tired of looking 
at the ugly toolbar under windows, compared to my linux installation, so 
I set out to learn how to build emacs under windows with image support.

I managed to build it with xpm support and as long as emacs can find the 
  xpm dll I get nice looking toolbars. Good!

However, I noticed that emacs can be built to support not only xpm, but 
also png, gif, tiff and a few other image format. I set my configure 
script to pass --without-tiff, --without-png and so on so it doesn't 
test for any other format than xpm.

My question is this: What am I missing without png support, without tiff 
support etc? I only work with text with emacs, 90 percent of the time 
programming. My original wish has been fullfilled, which was nice 
looking toolbars on windows, but I wanted to know if it might be a good 
idea to build emacs with support for the other image formats as well. 
But if it doesn't matter to what I do with emacs, I don't want to 
complicate my "build environment" unnecessarily.

Also, I noticed that my build script doesn't work anymore when the jobs 
parameter is passed to make (on windows, trunk), but I will post a 
separate message about that later today I hope.

- Eric Lilja

Re: Building with image support

[David Kastrup]

Eric Lilja <mindcooler@gmail.com> writes:

> My question is this: What am I missing without png support, without
> tiff support etc? I only work with text with emacs, 90 percent of
> the time programming. My original wish has been fullfilled, which
> was nice looking toolbars on windows, but I wanted to know if it
> might be a good idea to build emacs with support for the other image
> formats as well. But if it doesn't matter to what I do with emacs, I
> don't want to complicate my "build environment" unnecessarily.

You can use Emacs to browse/view images and directories containing
them, and there is something like
<URL:http://www.gnu.org/software/auctex/preview-latex.html> if you
are using LaTeX for writing texts.

-- 
David Kastrup

Re: Building with image support

[Eric Lilja]

David Kastrup wrote:
> Eric Lilja <mindcooler@gmail.com> writes:
> 
>> My question is this: What am I missing without png support, without
>> tiff support etc? I only work with text with emacs, 90 percent of
>> the time programming. My original wish has been fullfilled, which
>> was nice looking toolbars on windows, but I wanted to know if it
>> might be a good idea to build emacs with support for the other image
>> formats as well. But if it doesn't matter to what I do with emacs, I
>> don't want to complicate my "build environment" unnecessarily.
> 
> You can use Emacs to browse/view images and directories containing
> them, and there is something like
> <URL:http://www.gnu.org/software/auctex/preview-latex.html> if you
> are using LaTeX for writing texts.
> 

Thanks for the quick reply, David. If I get more serious in my attempt 
to learn latex, I will most definetly look into latex preview mode and 
try to build emacs with the image format support it needs for that. But 
as far as the "UI" is concerned, xpm is sufficient, right?

- Eric

Re: Building with image support

[David Kastrup]

Eric Lilja <mindcooler@gmail.com> writes:

> David Kastrup wrote:
>> Eric Lilja <mindcooler@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> My question is this: What am I missing without png support, without
>>> tiff support etc? I only work with text with emacs, 90 percent of
>>> the time programming. My original wish has been fullfilled, which
>>> was nice looking toolbars on windows, but I wanted to know if it
>>> might be a good idea to build emacs with support for the other image
>>> formats as well. But if it doesn't matter to what I do with emacs, I
>>> don't want to complicate my "build environment" unnecessarily.
>>
>> You can use Emacs to browse/view images and directories containing
>> them, and there is something like
>> <URL:http://www.gnu.org/software/auctex/preview-latex.html> if you
>> are using LaTeX for writing texts.
>>
>
> Thanks for the quick reply, David. If I get more serious in my attempt
> to learn latex, I will most definetly look into latex preview mode and
> try to build emacs with the image format support it needs for
> that. But as far as the "UI" is concerned, xpm is sufficient, right?

PNG icons supposedly look quite more refined on GTK+, partly due to
better transparency support.

-- 
David Kastrup

Re: Building with image support

[Eric Lilja]

David Kastrup wrote:
> Eric Lilja <mindcooler@gmail.com> writes:
> 
>> David Kastrup wrote:
>>> Eric Lilja <mindcooler@gmail.com> writes:
>>>
>>>> My question is this: What am I missing without png support, without
>>>> tiff support etc? I only work with text with emacs, 90 percent of
>>>> the time programming. My original wish has been fullfilled, which
>>>> was nice looking toolbars on windows, but I wanted to know if it
>>>> might be a good idea to build emacs with support for the other image
>>>> formats as well. But if it doesn't matter to what I do with emacs, I
>>>> don't want to complicate my "build environment" unnecessarily.
>>> You can use Emacs to browse/view images and directories containing
>>> them, and there is something like
>>> <URL:http://www.gnu.org/software/auctex/preview-latex.html> if you
>>> are using LaTeX for writing texts.
>>>
>> Thanks for the quick reply, David. If I get more serious in my attempt
>> to learn latex, I will most definetly look into latex preview mode and
>> try to build emacs with the image format support it needs for
>> that. But as far as the "UI" is concerned, xpm is sufficient, right?
> 
> PNG icons supposedly look quite more refined on GTK+, partly due to
> better transparency support.
> 

I see, do you know if it has any effect on windows? When I'm using 
GNU/Linux, I use the binary supplied with my distribution. I don't know 
how to build it on that platform yet. I will most likely try to learn 
that if I continue to use the cvs trunk version.

- Eric

Re: Building with image support

[Jason Rumney]

Eric Lilja wrote:
> I see, do you know if it has any effect on windows? When I'm using
> GNU/Linux, I use the binary supplied with my distribution. I don't
> know how to build it on that platform yet. I will most likely try to
> learn that if I continue to use the cvs trunk version.


The visual effect of using PNG images is the same on Windows as other
platforms, but on Windows you would need to customize the toolbar to use
your choice of PNG icons (not included with Emacs), whereas on GNU/Linux
using a GTK build of Emacs, you will automatically get the appropriate
PNG icons from the GTK theme you have selected.

Building on GNU/Linux is not much different than on Windows, except all
the commands are performed from the top level directory instead of the
nt subdirectory.

Re: Building with image support

[Eric Lilja]

Jason Rumney wrote:
> Eric Lilja wrote:
>> I see, do you know if it has any effect on windows? When I'm using
>> GNU/Linux, I use the binary supplied with my distribution. I don't
>> know how to build it on that platform yet. I will most likely try to
>> learn that if I continue to use the cvs trunk version.
> 
> 
> The visual effect of using PNG images is the same on Windows as other
> platforms, but on Windows you would need to customize the toolbar to use
> your choice of PNG icons (not included with Emacs), whereas on GNU/Linux
> using a GTK build of Emacs, you will automatically get the appropriate
> PNG icons from the GTK theme you have selected.

Thanks for your replies everyone. Since I don't plan on using any custom 
toolbar on Windows, I think I will build with xpm support only. When I 
learn how to build on GNU/Linux, I shall build with png support as well.

> 
> Building on GNU/Linux is not much different than on Windows, except all
> the commands are performed from the top level directory instead of the
> nt subdirectory.

Re: Building with image support

[Richard Stallman]

    Hello, I've been building emacs on windows for a few year now but I have 
    always built it without image support. Anyway, I grew tired of looking 
    at the ugly toolbar under windows, compared to my linux installation,

I am sure it is a GNU/Linux installation, so please don't call it a
"Linux installation".  See http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html.

How much you need PNG support, etc., is a matter of how often you want
to display such images.  It varies from person to person.

Re: Building with image support

[Eric Lilja]

Richard Stallman wrote:
>     Hello, I've been building emacs on windows for a few year now but I have 
>     always built it without image support. Anyway, I grew tired of looking 
>     at the ugly toolbar under windows, compared to my linux installation,
> 
> I am sure it is a GNU/Linux installation, so please don't call it a
> "Linux installation".  See http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html.

Of course, please forgive me.

> 
> How much you need PNG support, etc., is a matter of how often you want
> to display such images.  It varies from person to person.

Well, as I wrote, so far I only use emacs for working with text, mostly 
writing programs.