Short: GIF/AnimGIF twaddler tool Author: Eddie Kohler , Morphos Port by Fabrizio Bartoloni Uploader: lanch tiscali it (Fabrizio "Lanch" Bartoloni) Type: gfx/conv Version: 1.42 Architecture: ppc-morphos Note from the porting author: This is the morphos porting compiled straight from the original sources, if you look for the 68k version please look at Diego Casorran homepage at http://amiga.sourceforge.net for this and more of his portings and feel free to donate on his PayPal account to keep him doing this great service to the Amiga and clones community. GIFSICLE 1.42 ============= ABOUT GIFSICLE -------------- Gifsicle twaddles GIF image files in a variety of ways. It is better than many of the freely available GIF twaddlers on the market -- for one thing, it has more options. It supports merging several GIFs into a GIF animation; exploding an animation into its component frames; changing individual frames in an animation; turning interlacing on and off; adding transparency; adding delays, disposals, and looping to animations; adding or removing comments; flipping and rotation; optimizing animations for space; and changing images' colormaps, among other things. Extensive command-line options control which, if any, of these occur. Gifview, a companion program requiring X11, displays GIF images and animations on an X display. It can display multi-frame GIFs either as slideshows, displaying one frame at a time, or as real-time animations. Gifdiff, another companion program, checks two GIF files for identical visual appearance. This is probably most useful for testing GIF-manipulating software. Each of these programs has a manpage, `PROGRAMNAME.1'. The Gifsicle package comes with NO WARRANTY, express or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. THE GIF PATENTS AND UNGIFS -------------------------- Unisys owns patents on the Lempel-Ziv-Welch compression algorithm used in GIFs, which means that GIF-manipulating software cannot be truly free. Some people in the know have said that decompression is not covered by the LZW patents (I have my doubts). That leaves compression. Independently, Toshio Kuratomi and Hutchison Avenue Software Corporation (http://www.hasc.com/, ) cut the Gordian knot by writing GIFs without LZW compression. These GIFs are larger, but perfectly readable by normal GIF viewers, and they avoid the Unisys patents. Gifsicle can be configured to write run-length-encoded GIFs, rather than LZW-compressed GIFs, making it completely free software (if you believe that decompression isn't patented). Turn this on by giving `./configure' the `--enable-ungif' switch. The disadvantage: your GIF outputs will be larger, often by a factor of 2 or more. You can tell which gifsicle you are running by typing `gifsicle --version'. If it says `(ungif)', gifsicle is writing run-length-encoded GIFs. This gifsicle package may have been distributed without the file that implements LZW compression. If you try to configure such a distribution without `--enable-ungif', you will get an error message. See the Gifsicle web page if you have such a distribution but want LZW compression. CHANGES ------- See `NEWS' in this directory for a detailed listing of changes. BUGS, SUGGESTIONS, ETC. ----------------------- Please write me if you have trouble building or running gifsicle, or if you have suggestions or patches. Eddie Kohler kohler@icir.org http://www.icir.org/kohler/ GIFSICLE HOME PAGE ------------------ For latest distributions, bug reports, and other stuff, see the Gifsicle home page at http://www.lcdf.org/gifsicle/ COPYRIGHT/LICENSE ----------------- All source code is Copyright (C) 1997-2003 Eddie Kohler. IF YOU PLAN TO USE GIFSICLE ONLY TO CREATE OR MODIFY GIF IMAGES, DON'T WORRY ABOUT THE REST OF THIS SECTION. Anyone can use Gifsicle however they wish; the license applies only to those who plan to copy, distribute, or alter its code. If you use Gifsicle for an organizational or commercial Web site, I would appreciate a link to the Gifsicle home page on any `About This Server' page, but it's not required. This code, with the exception of the GIF compression code in gifwrite.c, is distributed under the GNU General Public License, Version 2, or, at your discretion, any later version. The GNU General Public License is available via the Web at The following alternative license may be used at your discretion. Permission is granted to copy, distribute, or alter gifsicle, whole or in part, as long as source code copyright notices are kept intact, with the following restrictions. 1. Unisys Corp. holds a patent on the Lempel-Ziv-Welch compression algorithm used by GIF images. When this first became an issue several years ago, Unisys stated that programs available at no cost to the user, like Gifsicle, could use LZW compression in the context of GIF images without obtaining a license. If you plan to distribute GIF writing code in a shareware or commercial product, you will need to worry about obtaining a license. (Many people believe that LZW decompression is not covered by the Unisys patent, so GIF reading code is probably all right.) 2. Developers or distributors who plan to use Gifsicle code, whole or in part, in a product whose source code will not be made available to the end user -- more precisely, in a context which would violate the GPL -- MUST contact the author and obtain permission before doing so. AUTHORS ------- Eddie Kohler http://www.icir.org/kohler/ He wrote it. Anne Dudfield http://www.frii.com/~annied/ She named it. David Hedbor Many bug reports and constructive whining about the optimizer. Emil Mikulic Win32 port help. Hans Dinsen-Hansen http://www.danbbs.dk/~dino/ Adaptive tree method for GIF writing.