PNG - Ideas to Integrated Circuits

PNG-supporting Libraries and Toolkits
● Kylix [Borland] (Linux/X) - all versions; read/write; commercial/freeware. (Kylix's native PNG
support apparently is fairly well hidden, but Chris Rorden has documented the procedure to
register the format. He also has a link to Peter Haas's page of Delphi PNG and MNG libraries.)
● lcms [Martí Maria Saguer] (Win32, Unix, etc.) - version 1.03 and later; freeware (LGPL) with
source. (This is a small, independently developed color management system with read-only
support for a "wide subset" of ICC profiles. Originally it was not in any way specific to PNG, but
versions since 1.03 can read embedded ICC profiles in PNG images [iCCP chunk].)
● LEADTOOLS [LEAD Technologies] (Windows 3.x, Win32) - various versions from 1997 and
later; read/write; no 16-bit-per-sample color support; no 2-bit support; full 8-bit alpha support;
commercial. (This is a programming library supporting the compression and decompression of
numerous image formats; it also comes in Visual Basic and ActiveX flavors. At one time it
supported DOS and OS/2, but there was no sign of either as of October 1998.)
● libAfterImage [Sasha Vasko] (Unix/X) - all versions? read/write (read-only prior to version
0.81); full alpha support claimed; requires libpng and zlib; freeware (GPL) with source. (This is
an "image-loading, storing, blending, rendering and manipulation library for X"; claimed to be
fast.)
● libferris [Ben Martin] (Unix/X) - version 0.4.0(?) and later; read-only; alpha support; requires
libpng and zlib; freeware (GPL) with source. (This is a C++ virtual-filesystem implementation
with support for OS/2-like extended attributes [EAs] about files. PNG support is in the form of
EA metainfo.)
● libgraph [JP Rosevear] (Unix, etc.) - all versions; write-only; requires gd, libpng, and zlib;
freeware (GPL) with source. (This is a programming library that provides "generic graphbuilding
capablities." The original web page claimed that it supported only Unix-like systems,
but it should be generic enough to compile under Windows or most other OSes, too. This
product is no longer under development.)
● libmng [Gerard Juyn] (Unix, Win32, etc.) - all versions; read/write; MNG and JNG support;
requires zlib and optionally libjpeg (JNG) and lcms (color correction); freeware (zlib/libpng)
with source. (This is the official MNG/JNG reference library, and it includes PNG support, too.
The CVS tree is browsable online. There is also a MASM32 add-on available from the download
page.)
● libplot [Robert S. Maier and others] (Unix, etc.) - version 2.4.1 and later; write-only; binary
transparency support (alpha support coming); requires libpng and zlib; freeware (GPL) with
source. (This is a plotting/graphing library similar to gd above except oriented toward vector
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