Overview¶
Warning¶
ImageMagick is a complicated library with poor documentation and too many warts. Additionally, the author’s C is a bit rusty. sanpera is thus completely unreliable and may destroy your images, eat all your memory, and/or burn your house down.
Patches and expertise are, of course, entirely welcome.
Compatibility¶
sanpera is known to work with Python 2.7. It probably works with earlier versions of Python 2, and possibly works with Python 3.
Installation¶
sanpera requires Cython.
You will also need ImageMagick and its headers installed if you plan to get very far.
Minimum versions are unclear; thusfar sanpera has only been built and used with the latest versions of everything.
Regarding ImageMagick¶
There are several Python libraries, in varying states of completion and decay, that wrap ImageMagick.
sanpera is explicitly not such a library. ImageMagick is considered an implementation detail, and its design influences sanpera’s as little as possible. sanpera actually goes to considerable lengths to subvert ImageMagick features in many cases, where such features are awkward in Python, obscure and surprising, inappropriate for a general-use library, or otherwise deemed undesireable.
ImageMagick was chosen for its ubiquity, fairly broad feature set, and familiarity. GraphicsMagick was briefly evaluated, and even powered the initial prototype, but it has languished considerably since it was forked from ImageMagick. Other candidates for an underlying library were either too cumbersome, too underpowered, or tragically unknown to the author at the time.
Name¶
As it’s a library and not a program, the name “sanpera” is written in lowercase.
“Sanpera” is the Hindi term for a snake charmer—i.e., one who might manipulate Python with magick.