PIL questions: still supported? Problems on 2.7 for win? alternatives?

[Gelonida N]

Hi,

I'm trying to migrate a project with legacy code from 2.6 (with PIL
1.1.6) to 2.7 with (PIL 1.1.7)
The SW should run on Windows.


PIL fails with an error concering '_imagingft'
This seems to be a known issue.

http://code.google.com/p/pythonxy/issues/detail?id=300
and the bug was never closed.

One suggestion is to download an alternative build from a non official site.

Looking at the activity of PIL (
http://www.pythonware.com/products/pil/index.htm ) it seems, that
development stopped,
The latest build (with known bugs and missing functionality for python
2.7.) seems to be from November 15, 2009.
In the net I read, that there's so little activity on PIL, because it's
stable, which doesn't seem to be the case for the 2.7 binary package.

This all does not sound very comforting. Why is there no fix on the
official site?

I wondered whether some of you have a little more insight into what's
going on with PIL.

Short term: get PIL working on 2.7 windows?
----------------------------------------------------
My shortterm problem is migrating existing code to 2.7 and keeping the
code, that uses PIL.
So I'll probably try to install the custom binary, but would like to
know whether anybody has experience with this build.
http://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/#pil

Alternatively how tricky is PIL to be compiled with mingw?



Mid term: What to use to manipulate images?
--------------------------------------------

My midterm problem is to stay with Python 2.7 and to write occasinally
new code, that does some basic image manipulations.

Can I still count on PIL? The fact, that the official devs don't even
bother to fix some basic functionality of their binary release tells me
that either very few people use PIL (or at least the broken
functionality somehow related to the font libraries) on 2.7

What alternatives do exist for PIL?
We just need some lines drawn, some text drown, some scaling,
transparency merging, . . . and PIL seend decent enough.

There seems to be freeimagepy, but the bindings seem to be 'only' ctypes
bindings http://freeimagepy.sourceforge.net/
Any experience with this libraries?

Any other suggestions?



Longterm Will PIL officially exist for Python 3?
-------------------------------------------------

When really all libraries that the project needs are supported
I''ll probably migrate to Python 3.

For Python 3 there is not even a broken official release, but only forks.

Why isn't any of these forks becoming 'official'?

If a package is not supported for Windows via official binary releases /
easy_install, then I'm a little more afraid, that the package
(maintainers included) will disappear in the near future.

Thanks a lot in advance for opinions / recommendations / clarifications

 

[alex23]

This all does not sound very comforting. Why is there no fix on the
official site?

Has a bug been logged about the issue?

The Plone community keeps a fairly up-to-date fork called Pillow,
we've had a lot of success using that locally:

http://pypi.python.org/pypi/Pillow/

 

[cjgohlke]

Has a bug been logged about the issue?

See issue #1 at <http://hg.effbot.org/pil-117/issue/1/windows-build-of-_imagingft-module-fails>

Christoph

 

[Alex Clark]

Has a bug been logged about the issue?

The Plone community keeps a fairly up-to-date fork called Pillow,
we've had a lot of success using that locally:

http://pypi.python.org/pypi/Pillow/

Actually, I started it for the Plone community, but have recently
broadened the scope (since most of the contributions came from outside
Plone). It now lives here:

- https://github.com/python-imaging/Pillow


If you have any trouble using it, please open a ticket here:

- https://github.com/python-imaging/Pillow/issues



Alex

 

[alex23]

So I'll probably try to install the custom binary, but would like to
know whether anybody has experience with this
build.http://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/#pil

Sorry, I missed this the first time. I'm using this version
successfully under Windows 7 64-bit. I've had nothing but success with
extensions I've used from that site.

 

[alex23]

Actually, I started it for the Plone community, but have recently
broadened the scope (since most of the contributions came from outside
Plone).

You're a saint, thanks for taking this on.

 

[Gelonida N]

Has a bug been logged about the issue?

The Plone community keeps a fairly up-to-date fork called Pillow,
we've had a lot of success using that locally:

http://pypi.python.org/pypi/Pillow/

Thanks for all your answers.

So it seems to be safe to use either Christoph' binary PIL distribution
or to use Pillow.

The fact, that pillow is accessable via PyPi / easy_install / PIP pushes
me slightly towards pillow.


I assume it's best to uninstall PIL before installing pillow.


How much would I confuse easy_install / pip in a normal windows
non virutal environment if I didn't uninstall PIP before (or even worse
if I installed PIL, then pillow and uninstalled then PIL)

(Just anticipating all the smart thigns, that my collegues (or myself)
might do


On a Linux machine:
What would happen in a virtualenv with sitepackages (amonst them PIL
installed and a pillow installed ontop of it?
I don't think I can uninstall PIL, as many distro packages depend on it.
I don't want to create a virtualenv without site packages, as I have
many dependencies and some of them are a little tricky to compile.

 

[alex23]

So it seems to be safe to use either Christoph' binary PIL distribution
or to use Pillow.

The fact, that pillow is accessable via PyPi / easy_install / PIP pushes
me slightly towards pillow.

I assume it's best to uninstall PIL before installing pillow.

I would expect you'd be fine. Being a different package, it's a
different namespace, so they shouldn't conflict.

On a Linux machine:
What would happen in a virtualenv with sitepackages (amonst them PIL
installed and a pillow installed ontop of it?
I don't think I can uninstall PIL, as many distro packages depend on it.
I don't want to create a virtualenv without site packages, as I have
many dependencies and some of them are a little tricky to compile.

Again, you should be fine, as it's in a separate namespace. You
definitely don't want to mess with PIL if you have other dependencies.

 

[Gelonida N]

I would expect you'd be fine. Being a different package, it's a
different namespace, so they shouldn't conflict.

This is what is confusing me.
if I start with a new python and I just install Pillow, then pillow is
imported via
import PIL
so it does not seem to have a separate name space

If I had PIL and pillow installed, then I wouldn't even know how to
choose which one to import.

Again, you should be fine, as it's in a separate namespace. You
definitely don't want to mess with PIL if you have other dependencies.

Well I'm slightly confused, but will play a little to see what exactly works

 

[alex23]

This is what is confusing me.
if I start with a new python and I just install Pillow, then pillow is
imported via
import PIL
so it does not seem to have a separate name space

If I had PIL and pillow installed, then I wouldn't even know how to
choose which one to import.

Ah, I'm so sorry, I totally thought pillow had moved into its own
namespace (but of course that makes no sense if it's to be a drop-in
replacement for PIL).

To be honest, I never rely on the system install of Python to provide
anything, and prefer to use buildout/setup.py to guarantee the
development/installation environment is correct. I suspect (and
hopefully someone with more virtualenv experience will speak up here)
that you'll have to modify your PYTHONPATH within the virtualenv to
point to your local install of pillow before the site packages.