| Re: [AD] GIF patent / support |
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On 2004-10-04, Elias Pschernig <allefant@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Maybe the question should be changed into: Why can't allegro read
> GIF/PNG/JPG/MP3/TTF/AVI files?
Proposed patch.
Index: docs/src/faq._tx
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/alleg/allegro/docs/src/faq._tx,v
retrieving revision 1.37
diff -u -r1.37 faq._tx
--- docs/src/faq._tx 28 Apr 2004 08:30:21 -0000 1.37
+++ docs/src/faq._tx 7 Oct 2004 07:46:05 -0000
@@ -651,12 +651,15 @@
Allegro.
-@@ Why can't Allegro read GIF files?
+@@ Why can't Allegro read GIF/PNG/JPG/XXX files out of the box?
- Unisys has a patent on the LZW compression algorithm that is used by
- the GIF format. We want everything in Allegro to be freely usable
- without any restrictions whatsoever, which means we can't include any
- code that is subject to licensing or the payment of royalties.
+ Most likely license issues. Allegro's giftware license is too
+ permissive to easily include third party software. Even if the license
+ of some file format was compatible, the Allegro developers have decided
+ to not include further file format support into Allegro. They can be
+ writen as addons using register_bitmap_file_type(). For available
+ addons, browse the Libraries section of the website
+ <link>http://www.allegro.cc/</a>.
@@ My program crashes all the time. Could this be a bug in Allegro?