I'm happy to announce version 1.2b2 of the "Img" package. This
package enhances Tk, adding support for many other Image formats:
BMP, XBM, XPM, GIF (with transparency), PNG, JPEG, TIFF and
postscript. This version only works with Tcl/Tk 8.0 or higher
(tested up to Tk8.1b2). If you are using Tk4.2 or lower,
stick with Img1.1.4 (which is still available).

Currently there are two identical source distributions:
	img12b2.zip              (for Windows)	(about 1.7 Mb)
	img1.2b2.tar.gz          (for Unix)	(about 1.5 Mb)

All these files can be downloaded from:
        ftp://ftp.neosoft.com/pub/tcl/sorted/packages-8.0/graphics/img/1.2/

The most recent info is always available at:
	http://home.wxs.nl/~nijtmans/img.html

Changes compared to version 1.2b1 (see changes file for
more details)
- Upgrade to libpng-1.0.3
- Two small bug-fixes, reported by Steven Grady (Thanks!!!!).
- Internal format processing rewrite, using Tcl_Obj's
  in more places than before. Suggested by Nick Ing-Simmons.
- Fully functional "Makefile.gnu". It still needs some
  tweaking of the Tk and CygWin header files, and you need
  to create libtclstub8.1.a and libtkstub8.1.a manually.

The main library is libimg1.2.so (libimg1.2.sl, libimg1.2.a,
img12.dll), which handles the BMP, XBM, XPM, GIF formats and
the Pixmap image type. This library can be loaded dynamically
into Tcl/Tk. If these formats are all you need, no other
libraries need to be installed.

If you want to write images to disk which contain transparency
information (e.g. GIF89 or PNG with alpha channel), a patch
for Tk is needed. See the /patches/ subdirectory for more
information. Without this patch only GIF87 will be written,
and the alpha channel will be missing from PNG files. In
other words: The background color will not be as intended but
everything else should be O.K.

For PNG, JPEG and TIFF support, other dynamic libraries need to
be present at runtime. These are all public domain, and no
modifications are needed. If your system already has these
libraries (maybe under a different name) you probably
don't have to re-build them. But otherwise, the Img package
contains everyting to upgrade, if you like:
    libz.so (libz.sl, libz.a, zlib.dll)            Version 1.1.3
        Implements de "deflate" compression for PNG and TIFF.
    libpng.so (libpng.sl,libpng.a,png.dll)         Version 1.0.3
    libjpeg.so (libjpeg.sl,libjpeg.a,jpeg.dll)     Version 6b
    libtiff.so (libtiff.sl,libtiff.a,tiff.dll      Version 3.4.37
Especially libpng and libjpeg are advised to be upgraded if
you have an earlier version. PNG wouldn't even work with 0.90
or earlier. JPEG works, but you can expect problems with smoothing.

For postscript you need Ghostscript (version 2.6 or higher) to be
available on your system.

Many thanks to the following people:
Andreas Kupries <a.kupries@westend.com>
  Testing on Linux, and supplying everything for the
  Windows port.
Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
  Wrote the JPEG handler (but I'm responsible for the
  dynamical loading part).
Lolo <lolo@pcsig22.etsimo.uniovi.es>
  Original GIF87 write function.
Ioi K. Lam <ioi@eng.sun.com>
  Pixmap image type (imgPmap.c, imgUnixPmap.c, imgWinPmap.c),
  many functions of which are used in imgXPM.c as well.
Mario Weilguni <mweilguni@sime.com>
  Many improvements to imgXPM.c.
Larry Virden <lvirden@cas.org>
  Bug reports and other useful remarks.

Enjoy,
        Jan Nijtmans
        CMG (Computer Management Group) Arnhem B.V.
        email: Jan.Nijtmans@wxs.nl (private)
	       Jan.Nijtmans@cmg.nl (work)
        url:   http://home.wxs.nl/~nijtmans/
