xli for DEBIAN
----------------------

xli displays images under X11.  Debian includes other packages for
image display: xv, xloadimage, and display from the imagemagick
package.  The xli README file describes the relationship between xli
and xloadimage as follows:

    xli version 1.00 was based on xloadimage version 3.01.
    xli version 1.16 has many improvements over xli 1.00. 

    xloadimage is maintained by Jim Frost - jimf@saber.com

    xli is maintained by Graeme Gill - graeme@labtam.oz.au

xli handles some image formats that neither xloadimage nor xv do.
Also, xv is non-free (shareware).

The xli package also supplies xlito, which appends a trailing option
string to an image file.  xli will look for this string, and take
default display options from it.

xli takes some special actions if it called by the name xsetbg or
xview, and the upstream package installs two symbolic links by these
names.  However, the Debian package xloadimage creates links with the
same names.  In order to prevent overlaps between the packages, this
package omits the links.  Later releases of both packages will handle
this with Debian's "alternatives" mechanism (with symbolic links
through /etc/alternatives.)

The following table shows the image handling capabilities of xli,
xloadimage, imagemagick, and xv, and the translations provided by the
netpbm package.  R and W indicate read and right respectively.  A
lower case letter indicates some restriction (e.g. xv handles
PostScript only if ghostscript is installed) or problem (at least in
my tests).  (Try it yourself - it may work okay for you.)

--------------------  black and white formats  --------------------------
xli		imagemagick	netpbm
	xloadimage	xv
R		RW		RW	G3 FAX images
R	R      			RW	X10 bitmap files
R	R	RW	RW	RW	X11 bitmap files
R	R			RW	CMU WM Raster
R	R			RW	GEM Bit Image (.img)
R	R			RW	MacPaint Image
R	R	RW	R	RW	Monochrome PC Paintbrush (.pcx) images
R	RW	RW	RW		Portable Bit Map (PBM)
R		RW	RW		Windows, OS/2 BMP Image
R		RW			Sun monochrome rasterfiles
				R	Xerox doodle brushes
				RW	Andrew Toolkit raster object
				RW	Atari Degas .pi3 format
				RW	Bennet Yee's "face" format
				RW	MGR format
				RW	Sun icon file
				W	ASCII graphics
				W	BBN BitGraph graphics
				W	Epson printer format
				W	Gemini 10x printer format
				W	GraphOn graphics
				W	HP LaserJet format
				W	Printronix format
				W	Unix plot(5) file
				W	Zinc Interface Library icon

--------------------  grayscale formats  --------------------------
xli		imagemagick	netpbm
	xloadimage	xv
R	RW	RW	RW	RW	Portable Bit Map (PGM)
		RW	RW	RW	FITS
				R	Biorad CSLM images
				R	HIPS
				R	PostScript "image" data
				R	raw grayscale bytes (e.g. the Molecular Dynamics and Leica CSLM formats)
				RW	Lisp Machine bit-array-file
				RW	Usenix FaceSaver(tm) file

--------------------  color formats  --------------------------
xli		imagemagick	netpbm
	xloadimage	xv
R					Photograph on CD Image
R		RW	RW		Sun color RGB rasterfiles
R		RW	Rw	RW	Targa (.tga) files
R	R	RW	RW	RW	GIF Image
R	R	RW	RW	Rw	X pixmap (.xpm) files
R	RW	RW	RW		JFIF style jpeg images
r	RW	RW	RW	RW	Portable Bit Map (PPM)
			RW		IRIS RGB
			RW		PM
				R	Atari compressed Spectrum
				R	Atari uncompressed Spectrum
				R	Img-whatnot file
		RW		R	MTV/PRT ray-tracer output
				R	QRT ray-tracer output
				R	Xim file
				RW	Abekas YUV format
				RW	Atari Degas .pi1 format
		RW		RW	Color PC Paintbrush (.pcx) images
				RW	HP PaintJet format
				RW	IFF ILBM
		RW		RW	PICT
				W	AutoCAD DXB format
				W	AutoCAD slide format
				W	DEC sixel format
		RW		W	Motif UIL icon file
				W	NCSA Interactive Color Raster
				W	X11 "puzzle" file

--------------------  multi-type formats  --------------------------
xli		imagemagick	netpbm
	xloadimage	xv
R	R	RW		RW	X Window Dump
	R	RW	RW	RW	Sun Rasterfile
	RW	RW	RW	RW	TIFF image
		RW	RW	W	PostScript
				R	Zeiss CSLM images (the old format)
R		RW	RW		Portable Network Graphics (png)

--------------------  other formats  --------------------------
xli		imagemagick	netpbm
	xloadimage	xv
R					Fuzzy Bitmap (.fbm) images
R	R				FBM Image
R	R				McIDAS areafile
R	R	R	R		Utah Raster Toolkit (.rle) files
R	R				Faces Project
	R				Sun Visualization File Format
	R	R			VICAR Image
	RW				Native Image File Format (NIFF)


As of summer 1998, xli is not actively maintained.  Here is what the
last maintainer wrote:

  Date: Mon, 8 Jun 1998 18:25:23 +1000
  From: Graeme Gill <graeme@colorstar.com.au>
  To: jrv@vanzandt.mv.com
  Subject: Re: intent to package: xli

  > I have been looking at xli, and am thinking about preparing a Debian
  > package.  Are you still maintaining xli?  Is xli.1.16.tar.gz the most
  > recent version?

  I haven't done anything to it in about 4 years. 1.16 is the latest
  release. I have a stack of email patches, but not the time
  to deal with them ...

  Graeme Gill.

If you are interested in working with xli, please let us know.

James R. Van Zandt <jrv@vanzandt.mv.com>, Sun, 12 Jul 1998 21:54:22 -0400
