Imagemagick and LZW

[Philippe Troin <phil@fifi.org>]

As you probably know, the LZW compression algorithm used in GIF 
compression is under patent. I'm packaging the Imagemagick graphics 
program, which comes in two flavors, one with LZW, and the other 
without LZW. Until now, I packaged only the LZW-less version as this:
	imagemagick		the libmagick.so and the executables
	imagemagick-dev 	the libmagick.a and the includes
	imagemagick-doc		some www pages included with the distribution

As the changes in the LZM and non-LZW versions only occur in the 
libmagick library, what I'm planning to do is to separate the library 
from the executables and to have two different libraries, one in the 
free graphics without LZW and the other in non-free with LZW. The 
packages would be:

	libmagick:
		the non-LZW .so
		conflicts with libmagick-lzw
	libmagick-dev:
		the non-LZW .a and includes
		requires libmagick
	libmagick-lzw:
		the LZW .so
		conflicts with libmagick
	libmagick-lzw-dev:
		the LZW .a and includes
		requires libmagick-lzw
	imagemagick:
		the executables and the www pages
		depends on libmagick or libmagick-lzw
		depends on various graphics libraries (libjpeg, etc...)

What do you think of this scheme ? Additionnaly, it will allow 
certain new programs (like the upcoming PERL-Magick) to be installed 
without having to have the imagemagick executables installed.

Phil.


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