[Xastir] topo maps

[Tom Russo]

On Mon, Feb 08, 2010 at 09:26:11PM -0400, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <murraybr at nbnet.nb.ca> flavor, containing:
> Hi.
> I have been using Xastir for some time, installed from the repos of 
> Linux Mint 5 and all was well. Got a bit antsy and upgraded to Linux 
> Mint 8 and with that comes Xastir 1.9.4. Now if I try to use the Canada 
> topo maps I get a black screen. I notice that it uses Graphicsmagick, 
> would that be the problem. I'm not a Linux pro, didn't know whether to 
> come here or go to the Mint forums. Pardon my ignorance, but is there a 
> means of using a Terminal and apt-get to install xastir without 
> graphicsmagick and with imagemagick?

Others have followed up with the comment that 1.9.4 is quite old, and guidance
for building, but the important thing to note is that 1.9.8 does NOT have the 
bug that leads to the black screen with GraphicsMagick.  It was fixed in 
between 1.9.6 and 1.9.8, and now Xastir is happy with either.  So you probably 
want to update to 1.9.8.

GraphicsMagick is preferred, because it has a stable API and doesn't make us
chase down changes every year or so.  So if you build Xastir from source, build
it with GraphicsMagick if you can.  (Ubuntu's GraphicsMagick and ImageMagick
development packages interfere with each other, so if you must have ImageMagick
development headers for some other code you build from source, you have to use 
it for Xastir; otherwise, stick to GM if you have a choice).

-- 
Tom Russo    KM5VY   SAR502   DM64ux          http://www.swcp.com/~russo/
Tijeras, NM  QRPL#1592 K2#398  SOC#236        http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?DDTNM
  In some cultures what I do would be considered normal. 
                                  -- Ineffective daily affirmation