[Pkg-gmagick-im-team] Bug#596732: perlmagick: BlobToImage fails for SVG

[Nelson A. de Oliveira]

Hi Thomaz!

On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 8:08 PM, Thomas L Marshall <tlm at altmx.com> wrote:
> Please disregard my previous comments re differences between sid and
> squeeze.  I have completed a more controlled test and I have found that
> on both sid and squeeze libmagickcore3-extra is necessary for processing
> SVG -> png via perlmagick BlobToImage(). I have verified the original
> error without libmagickcore3-extra and I have also verified proper and
> compatible operation with libmagickcore3-extra installed.

Very good!

> I wonder if I should have been able to able to track this down or if
> there is a way to document this SVG prerequisite to make it easier to
> find the fix?

Users upgrading from older versions should be warned with the content
of /usr/share/doc/perlmagick/NEWS.Debian.gz

But indeed, people doing a new install of perlmagick only won't easily
find libmagickcore3-extra.
I need to see if it's better to cite libmagickcore3-extra in
perlmagick (and imagemagick) description or if it's better to include
a suggests or recommends for libmagickcore3-extra (also in perlmagick,
since imagemagick already recommends libmagickcore3-extra).
Installing only perlmagick without the imagemagick package was an
option that I hadn't thought.

> Also, libmagickcore3-extra carries with it a lot of additional stuff
> that maybe I don't need (libxinerama1, libxrandr2 seem to stand out)
> just to process SVG.  I wonder if it may be possible/better to move SVG
> back to libmagickcore3 but I understand that certain CVG fonts/effects
> do extend fairly deep down the rendering path.

Then we have another "problem" here :-)
Right now it's not possible to distribute both a imagemagick package
which depends on the graphical libs and also a version that has no
dependencies on them.

If you have the imagemagick package installed, you can see at
/usr/share/doc/imagemagick/TODO.Debian that it's in our TODO list a
solution for this.

About moving the SVG codec back to libmagickcore3, we will hit the
same issue again: some users will complain "Why do I need a SVG coder
if I don't use it?"
It's a problem in balancing features and dependencies that isn't
easily solved, unfortunately.

> Again, thanks for your attention to this issue.

You are welcome ;-)

Since this issue isn't really a bug, do you agree that we can close
this bug report?

Best regards,
Nelson