Subject: Re: bug#14358: Option to use GraphicsMagick instead of ImageMagick

From: Stefan Kangas <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 2021 09:37:23 -0700

Glenn Morris <[email-masked]> writes:

> Is it possible/desirable for Emacs to be able to use GraphicsMagick
> instead of ImageMagick? I'm assuming they provide the same
> functionality, but I know nothing about it.
>
> I has a rough'n'ready go at the trivial stuff (see below), but then gave
> up with these errors:

Glenn Morris <[email-masked]> writes:

> There's no interest in addressing this issue. Closing as wontfix.

Given that we are now no longer recommending ImageMagick, perhaps
GraphicsMagick support feels more relevant now than it used to?

>From my point of view, GraphicsMagick has better performance, half as
many dependencies, and way fewer CVE's.  Like ImageMagick, it also gives
us "free" support for a ton of different image formats, and "free" new
ones in the future.

On the flip-side, I personally get by just fine with our built-in
support for JPEG, GIF, SVG, PNG and some others (this list will include
WEBP in Emacs 29.1).  So I have no idea what need our users have for
support for a wider range of image formats.

One final consideration is that GraphicsMagick support could be a step
towards making our ImageMagick support obsolete.