GIF patent

[Hacker]

Hi Christian,
You said that the GIF patent is going to expire this summer and that finally you can support GIFs inside TC. However, I just read that the patent will expire this summer in US only and that in Europe / Japan it will be valid for another year.
Does this change anything?

TIA
Roman

[TucknDar]

Maybe we'll have to download TC from a US-server?

[ghisler(Author)]

Yes, I have read this in Heise news too. I will wait another year with GIF support. I think that the current irfanview/xnview solution works just fine (except, of course, for animated gifs).

[CADweazle]

Hi,

I hope, Christian will not be occupied with graphic-viewing-capabilities for TC.

Why?

Just have a look at speedcommander - it tries to do verything by itself.
Do you like this program?? Aha!!
The way that Christian has chosen is imho the best: concentrating on the main features, not trying to be an "eierlegende Wollmilchsau" as we say in german (e.g. a ferrari GT40 with trailer coupling and support for water skiing )

There are at least 2 (XnView and IrfanView) free and very good Graphic-Viewers, so why adding more of these capabilities to TC?
Ok... you want one handy tool that fits on one floppy.
But then - why waiting for GIF?
PNG is much better AND it's free and was always free... and so on....(to be continued).

Imho TC is a file-handler not a viewer.

Peace

Greetings,

[fabiochelly]

You said that the GIF patent is going to expire this summer and that finally you can support GIFs inside TC

Are GIF supported by TC currently? If yes, where? I thought that GIF were supported through IrfanView, not directly. So why is there something to change under TC?

[soreno]

2fabiochelly

Ghisler wrote:

"I will wait another year with GIF support."

That usually implies that is not currently supported..

[bheagle]

Imho TC is a file-handler not a viewer.

Sure it's a file manager, personally I think to myself...."self, why do you want a radio in your car??? A car transports you somewhere, so buy a walkman if you want music."

I think that any function that can enhance a program, such as a viewer, that does it internally is better than the PLUGIN method any day, especially when the program has the ability to do so much with files I don't see a downfall of viewing these files. If you need a particular file (gif) copied over to another dir, and you can't remember the exact name of the version you want, viewing it would be handy.

Just my opinion.....

[/quote]

[ghisler(Author)]

Are GIF supported by TC currently?

No. GIF files are passed to Irfaview via a Windows message, and Irfanview returns a BMP via the clipboard. This means that TC cannot support animated GIFs. Therefore I plan internal GIF support when the LZW patent expires. Since the GIF patent can be freely used in freeware, it's no problem for the Irfanview author to use it.

[jy Cheng]

http://www.ghisler.ch/board/viewtopic.php?t=1115
WLXFlic - Autodesk Flic Animation(FLC/FLI) Lister Plugin for Total Commander

It supports GIF (include animated GIF) files !!!

[CADweazle]

Na dann... also doch der PNG-support

Gruss,

[djk]

WLXFlic - Autodesk Flic Animation(FLC/FLI) Lister Plugin for Total Commander
It supports GIF (include animated GIF) files !!!

Well, it's really nice solution and I sometimes use it but... it works only when IrfanView support is disabled
IMO it would be great (for now, when TC doesn't support animated gifs directly) if I could define that for example .gif files are viewed using WLXFlic plugin, all others - not defined in wincmd.ini - by IrfanView.
I hoped that:

Code: Select all

14=D:\totalcmd\Lister\Flic.wlx
14_detect="ext="GIF""

will help but unfortunately it did not.

Christian, would it be possible to do it?

[ghisler(Author)]

TC 6.0 will allow plugins to override Irfanview via a special mechanism - TC 5.51 doesn't allow this yet.