[comment {-*- tcl -*- doctools}]
[vset FORMATNAME gif]
[vset FORMATFULLNAME {Graphics Interchange Format}]

[include format-header.inc]

This handler provides new additional configuration options. See
section [sectref {GIF OPTIONS}] for more detailed explanations.


[include format-middle.inc]


In addition the value for the option is treated as list and may
contain any of the special options listed in section

[sectref {GIF OPTIONS}].

[list_end]



[section {GIF OPTIONS}]

The handler provides two options, one for reading from a GIF image,
the other influencing the writing of such. 

[list_begin definitions]

[lst_item "[option -index] [arg n]"]

This option is for reading from GIF files containing more than one
image ([term {animated GIF's}], [term {GIF movies}]. When specified it
will read the [arg n]'th image in the data. The first image is at
index [const 0] and will be read by default, i.e. when the option is
not specified.

[lst_item "[option -interlaced] [arg bool]"]

If the value of this option is set to true the image will be written
using the interlaced sub-format of GIF. The default is to write
non-interlaced files. [emph {This option is not implemented yet.}]

[list_end]

[section {IMAGE COMPRESSION}]

Instead of LZW the run-length encoding of Hutchison Avenue Software
Corporation is used, also known as [term miGIF] compression. The miGIF
compression routines do not, strictly speaking, generate files
conforming to the GIF spec, since the image data is not LZW-compressed
(this is the point: in order to avoid transgression of the Unisys
patent on the LZW algorithm.) However, miGIF generates data streams
that any reasonably sane LZW decompresser will decompress to what we
want.

[section TRANSPARENCY]

If you want to write images to disk which contain transparency
information (e.g. GIF89) you need at least [package Tk] 8.3.



[list_begin definitions]
[include format-footer.inc]