Why does ksnapshot still not have GIF?

YAOMTC · #1 (**permalink**) 12-Jun-2009, 22:55

Not everything supports PNG format, sometimes I've gotta use GIF. And when I'm taking a lot of screenshots, I really shouldn't have to take the extra time in converting to GIF using a separate program. GIF has been around forever, and is huge, why doesn't this version of ksnapshot support it? It makes no sense to me...

Also, why doesn't gwenview support GIF animation? Most other image viewers do, the only other one I can think of is the default viewer on Windows XP, and I really think standards should be higher than that.

caf4926 · #2 (**permalink**) 12-Jun-2009, 22:59

Really this is a question you should take up at kde
KDE - Be free

YAOMTC · #3 (**permalink**) 13-Jun-2009, 00:33

The reason I didn't take it there is because of this archived post:

How To Add To Ksnapshot "the .gif Format" - openSUSE Forums

The user says that on a different distribution, ksnapshot had GIF support. So I figured it had something to do with openSUSE's build of it. Is that not true?

Also, KDE doesn't seem to have forums, should I use the bug report system or the IRC or what?

#4 (**permalink**) 13-Jun-2009, 00:44

> KDE doesn't seem to have forums

http://forum.kde.org/

--
natural_pilot

YAOMTC · #5 (**permalink**) 13-Jun-2009, 01:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by natural_pilot

> KDE doesn't seem to have forums

KDE Community Forums

--
natural_pilot

Whoops, missed that one. Thanks.

silenuz · #6 (**permalink**) 13-Jun-2009, 09:01

At a guess I would say this has something to do with the fact that by default, gif support has almost always been omitted from QT. This is because of patents on the decompression algorithm used. To enable gif support one would typically pass the -qt-gif command-line option to the configure script, or set the appropriate option in the qt installer.

YAOMTC · #7 (**permalink**) 13-Jun-2009, 12:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by silenuz

At a guess I would say this has something to do with the fact that by default, gif support has almost always been omitted from QT. This is because of patents on the decompression algorithm used. To enable gif support one would typically pass the -qt-gif command-line option to the configure script, or set the appropriate option in the qt installer.

So GIF is like the MP3 of the graphics formats?

ken_yap · #8 (**permalink**) 13-Jun-2009, 13:28

Not any more. The GIF patents have expired.

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