TIP #198: IMAGE COMMAND XPM EXTENSION ======================================= Version: $Revision: 1.6 $ Author: R. Timothy Edwards Don Porter Kevin Kenny State: Draft Type: Project Tcl-Version: 8.7 Vote: Pending Created: Wednesday, 12 May 2004 URL: https://tip.tcl-lang.org198.html Post-History: ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ABSTRACT ========== This TIP proposes an extension to the Tk *image* command to incorporate color pixmap images based on the XPM format. The format is analogous to the *bitmap* option (/tkImgBmap.c/ in the Tk source). RATIONALE =========== The "XPM" format has become more-or-less a standard, and is a nice text-readable color alternative to the standard X11 bitmap format. The runtime library for XPM is available in standard Linux distributions and elsewhere. Tk has a number of color *photo* image formats, but these make various assumptions about rendering. There is no color alternative to the simple pixel-based bitmap format. SPECIFICATION =============== This TIP specifies the extension of the *image* command in the following manner: *image create xpm* /name/ *-file* /xpm_file/ It would probably be a nice idea to include in-line pixmap specifications similar to that allowed for bitmaps by the BLT package. However, at this time, the reference implementation does not include such an extension. REFERENCE IMPLEMENTATION ========================== There is an implementation in the source for XCircuit[]. The source file is "tkPixmap.c". COMMENTS ========== I'd like to see more justification in this proposal as to why a new image type is needed, rather than implementing a suitable format for either the existing bitmap or photo image types. In fact, the Img extension already has XPM as a photo image format. I'm quite baffled as to the need for a new image type. Is this TIP better served by a request to promote XPM to the core set of supported formats? COPYRIGHT =========== This document has been placed in the public domain. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- TIP AutoGenerator - written by Donal K. Fellows