Re: Adding new image loader to gdk-pixbuf

[Matthias Clasen <mclasen redhat com>]

On Thu, 2004-04-22 at 23:08, Steffen Gutmann wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I would like to add a new image loader to the gdk-pixbuf library.  If I 
> understood the documentation about the gdk-pixbuf module interface 
> right, the only way to do this it to write a loadable module that 
> contains code for recognizing the image format and reading/writing/etc. 
> an image file.  This module then has to be installed into a certain 
> directory (normally libdir/gtk-2.0/version/loaders) and a module file 
> has to be updated (normally libdir/gtk-2.0/version/loaders).
> 
> Is this the only way of adding a new image format?
> 
> Of course this solution is nice and code can be shared by other 
> applications.  Looking at examples in the gdk-pixbuf source I think I 
> can implement this for the image format I am thinking of.  The image 
> file format I want to support is IFF/ILMB, a format that was/is used on 
> Amiga OS, and is rarely if at all used on other plattforms (but there is 
> ilbmtoppm under Unix, so it is not completely unknown).
> 
> If there is an API where I can register a new image format to the 
> gdk-pixbuf library during runtime of my application then I would prefer 
> this way (for now until there is enough request to make the new image 
> loader public by including it in the gdk-pixbuf library).  But there 
> seems to be no such possibility, at least I haven't found anything in 
> the docs and the source of gdk-pixbuf doesn't seem to provide a function 
> either.
> 
> Any comments welcome,

Steffen,

there is currently no way for applications to modify the set of
supported image formats at runtime, although some things have been
proposed, e.g. 
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=129420
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=129185

Regards,  Matthias