ANN: Python Imaging Library 1.1.4 final (may 10, 2003)

[Fredrik Lundh]

the labs proudly presents PIL 1.1.4 final:

    The Python Imaging Library (PIL) adds image processing capabilities
    to your Python interpreter. This library supports many file formats,
    and provides powerful image processing and graphics capabilities,
    including display support for Windows and Tkinter.

    Version 1.1.4 adds improved build scripts, truetype/opentype font
    support, memory mapping support also for non-Windows platforms,
    screen and clipboard grabbing on Windows, support for CSS-style
    color strings, support for IPTC/NAA and EXIF metadata, and more.
    See below for a full list.

    Get your copy of the source kit here:

        http://www.pythonware.com/products/pil/

enjoy,
the pil team

    "Secret Labs -- makers of fine pythonware since 1997."

-- changes in this version (relative to 1.1.3) --

+ Improved building on Mac OS X (from Jack Jansen).

+ Improved building on Windows with MinGW (from Klamer Shutte).

+ If no font is specified, ImageDraw now uses the embedded default
  font.  Use the "load" or "truetype" methods to load a real font.

+ Added embedded default font to the ImageFont module (currently
  an 8-pixel Courier font, taken from the X window distribution).

+ Added experimental EXIF support for JPEG files.  To extract EXIF
  information from a JPEG file, open the file as usual, and call the
  "_getexif" method.  If successful, this method returns a dictionary
  mapping EXIF TIFF tags to values.  If the file does not contain EXIF
  data, the "_getexif" method returns None.

  The "ExifTags" module contains a dictionary mapping tags to tag
  names.

  This interface will most likely change in future versions.

+ Fixed a bug when using the "transparency" option with the GIF
  writer.

+ Added limited support for "bitfield compression" in BMP files
  and DIB buffers, for 15-bit, 16-bit, and 32-bit images.  This
  also fixes a problem with ImageGrab module when copying screen-
  dumps from the clipboard on 15/16/32-bit displays.

+ Added experimental WAL (Quake 2 textures) loader.  To use this
  loader, import WalImageFile and call the "open" method in that
  module.

+ Added updated SANE driver (Andrew Kuchling, Abel Deuring)

+ Use Python's "mmap" module on non-Windows platforms to read some
  uncompressed formats using memory mapping.  Also added a "frombuffer"
  function that allows you to access the contents of an existing string
  or buffer object as if it were an image object.

+ Fixed a memory leak that could appear when processing mode "P"
  images (from Pier Paolo Glave)

+ Ignore Unicode characters in the BDF loader (from Graham Dumpleton)

+ Added experimental RGBA-on-RGB drawing support.  To use RGBA
  colours on an RGB image, pass "RGBA" as the second string to
  the ImageDraw.Draw constructor.

+ Added support for non-ASCII strings (Latin-1) and Unicode
  to the truetype font renderer.

+ The ImageWin "Dib" object can now be constructed directly from
  an image object.

+ The ImageWin module now allows you use window handles as well
  as device contexts.  To use a window handle, wrap the handle in
  an ImageWin.HWND object, and pass in this object instead of the
  device context.

+ Improved support for 16-bit unsigned integer images (mode "I;16").
  This includes TIFF reader support, and support for "getextrema"
  and "point" (from Klamer Shutte).

+ Made the BdfFontFile reader a bit more robust (from Kevin Cazabon
  and Dmitry Vasiliev)

+ Changed TIFF writer to always write Compression tag, even when
  using the default compression (from Greg Couch).

+ Added "show" support for Mac OS X (from Dan Wolfe).

+ Added clipboard support to the "ImageGrab" module (Windows only).
  The "grabclipboard" function returns an Image object, a list of
  filenames (not in 1.1.4), or None if neither was found.

+ Improved support for drawing RGB data in palette images.  You can
  now use RGB tuples or colour names (see below) when drawing in a
  mode "P" image.  The drawing layer automatically assigns color
  indexes, as long as you don't use more than 256 unique colours.

+ Moved self test from MiniTest/test.py to ./selftest.py.

+ Added support for CSS3-style color strings to most places that
  accept colour codes/tuples.  This includes the "ImageDraw" module,
  the Image "new" function, and the Image "paste" method.

  Colour strings can use one of the following formats: "#f00",
  "#ff0000", "rgb(255,0,0)", "rgb(100%,0%,0%)", "hsl(0, 100%, 50%)",
  or "red" (most X11-style colour names are supported).  See the
  documentation for the "ImageColor" module for more information.

+ Fixed DCX decoder (based on input from Larry Bates)

+ Added "IptcImagePlugin.getiptcinfo" helper to extract IPTC/NAA
  newsphoto properties from JPEG, TIFF, or IPTC files.

+ Support for TrueType/OpenType fonts has been added to
  the standard distribution.  You need the freetype 2.0
  library.

+ Made the PCX reader a bit more robust when reading 2-bit
  and 4-bit PCX images with odd image sizes.

+ Added "Kernel" class to the ImageFilter module.  This class
  allows you to filter images with user-defined 3x3 and 5x5
  convolution kernels.

+ Added "putdata" support for mode "I", "F" and "RGB".

+ The GIF writer now supports the transparency option (from
  Denis Benoit).

+ Added support for Palm pixmaps (from Bill Janssen).  This
  change was listed for 1.1.3, but the "PalmImagePlugin" driver
  didn't make it into the distribution.

+ Improved decoder error messages.

-- end --