From: Tim Hunter <TimHunter@...>
Date: 2008-05-04T01:35:32+09:00
Subject: Re: RMagick 2.3.0

David Scheffel wrote:
>> RMagick is a volunteer effort.
> 
> I know that and I greatly appreciate it.
> 
>> I suppose you're trying to say that your opinion is that GraphicsMagick
>> is faster and more reliable than ImageMagick. I'm sure there are many
>> people who would agree with you, and many that would disagree with you.
>> Personally I don't have an opinion, and I can honestly say that such
>> considerations never entered my mind.
> 
> Well, I've had no opinion about this at the beginning. Then I've tried 
> to collect some information about it and came to the conclusion that 
> GraphicsMagick seems to be the better choice in terms of reliability and 
> speed (correct me if I'm wrong):
> 
> 1) GraphicsMagick aims to be reliable as well as efficient in terms of 
> memory consumption and speed: 
> http://www.graphicsmagick.org/www/mission.html
> 
> 1.1) seems to be proved by: 
> http://www.graphicsmagick.org/www/BENCHMARKS.html
> though it is an old benchmark. I've found no evidence on the ImageMagick 
> site that performace improvements have been made by then.
> 
> 1.2) and proved by: 
> http://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=libmagick&searchon=names&suite=testing&section=all
> ImageMagick: several entries are marked as security patch.
> 
> http://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=libgraphicsmagick&searchon=names&suite=testing&section=all
> GraphicsMagick: no such markers
> 
>> However, it's not the case that I dropped all support for
>> GraphicsMagick. RMagick 1.15.13 supports all releases of GraphicsMagick,
>> as well as older releases of ImageMagick and older releases of Ruby,
>> although that support is bug-fixes only. This is ongoing. I downloaded
>> the GM 1.2 beta last night, and if any changes are necessary to support
>> 1.2, I hope to make them in a new RMagick 1.15 very soon.
> 
> I've just switched to ImageMagick and RMagick 2 yesterday, and will see 
> how it is going. I've just got my server by then.
> 
> If I will experience problems I guess I'm troubled. Well, I will go back 
> to RMagick 1 for sure. But I won't be able to move to Ruby 1.9 by the 
> time the new Rails is out.
> 
> I have to mention that I've started my own company at the beginning of 
> this year with the aim to establish my own web 2.0 platform. Yes, I 
> know, yet another;-) So Ruby 1.9 could cut down my hardware costs a 
> little, while I'm not making any profit. It would also offer me to go 
> with he mainstream in regards of Rails, and thus guarantees the better 
> Rails support.
> 
> So in case I'll experience problems with RMagick 2 in production I'll 
> come back to you. Maybe I can contribute some work then. Although I 
> would have to learn a lot, since I used to program C++ for the windows 
> platform only (Borland/Microsoft).

The ImageMagick forum is at http://www.imagemagick.org/discourse-server/ 
if you want to take your concerns about ImageMagick's reliability and 
performance directly to the ImageMagick developers.

If you encounter a problem with RMagick please report it. If the problem 
is in my code I can fix it, if it's in IM code I'll help you report it 
to the IM team.

-- 
RMagick: http://rmagick.rubyforge.org/
RMagick 2: http://rmagick.rubyforge.org/rmagick2.html