paintlib - Introduction

I have decided to stop maintaining paintlib.

There are several reasons for this. When I started paintlib ten years ago, my situation was very different - I was a computer science student with lots of free time. Now, I have a job, and in the last two years, I have found less and less time to spend on paintlib. Also, my second open-source project libavg (http://www.libavg.de) is getting noticed by more and more people, causing a proportionate amount of work. In consequence, paintlib has not received the attention it should.

That said, I do not believe that paintlib needs to stay unmaintained. In my opinion, it still one of the better imaging libraries, and if someone would like to take over, I'd be happy to help.

Thanks for all the support I have received, and my apologies to anyone who is using the library and has come to rely on it being kept up-to-date.

-- Ulrich von Zadow, Sept. 10, 2005

paintlib is a portable C++ class library for image loading, saving and manipulation. Images can be loaded from BMP, GIF, IFF, JPEG, PCX, PGM, PICT, PNG, PSD, SGI, TGA, TIFF and WMF files and saved in BMP, JPEG, PNG and TIFF formats. Image manipulation can be done either through filters implemented in filter classes or by directly accessing the bitmap bits. Full C++ source is provided. This is library version 2.60, 15/04/04. The newest version of paintlib can be found via http://www.paintlib.de/paintlib/.

In addition to the C++ library, an ActiveX component to display images in all the formats supported by paintlib is provided. paintX (the paintlib ActiveX control) can be used exactly like a VB picture object would be used.

Although there are a few Windows-specific functions (For instance, images can be loaded from windows resource files), the C++ library is portable. A configure script for *nix systems and MS Visual C++ project files are included. In general, the only prerequisite is a C++-compiler with standard C libraries and support for exception handling.

paintlib is copyrighted open source software. For details, see the copyright page. In a nutshell: You may use paintlib in any way you wish, providing you preserve the copyright if you redistribute any source. If you distribute a program using paintlib, this must be mentioned in the about box. If you'd like to participate in development, there's a sourceforge project set up with cvs, bug tracking etc. at http://sourceforge.net/projects/paintlib/.

There is a mailing list set up for discussions about paintlib. People on this list also get notified whenever a new version is distributed. You can subscribe on the feedback page. If you have a question about paintlib, your best way of getting help is by asking on the list. If you can't get paintlib to compile, please read the tutorial page before asking for help. Also, don't send me a mail asking me to mail back a compiled version of the library. There is no way I can make sure the compiled version fits your configuration.