Compiling Ghostscript on Intel 64 bit Mac OS X

Ran into problems getting Ghostscript to compile on an Intel Mac running Snow Leopard.

The error messages were telling me it was trying to compile a 32 executable, and then after fixing that it complained that libraries in /opt/local/lib were compiled for 32 bit. The thing is, except for some old mac ports stuff, I don't use /opt/local!

I was able to fix compile successfully with three steps.

1: Take the old /opt/local/lib code out of the picture by renaming the directory to a temporary name. I can bring it back if it turns out something actually relies on it.

2: Rub ./configure with CFLAGS and LDFLAGS defined. These end up getting passed to 'make'

$ ./configure CFLAGS='-arch x86_64' LDFLAGS='-arch x86_64'

3: Compile it 'make' (with no flags) and install with 'sudo make install'

Not sure yet if it can pick up all the fonts that it needs - we'll soon see...


 

Image Resizing with Rails Paperclip and ImageMagick

The Rails Paperclip plugin uses ImageMagick for creating thumbnail images, etc.

You specify the size of images using ImageMagick's Geometry syntax which can be a little confusing. Here are the aspects of that which are most useful for Paperclip users.

The basic specification is <width>x<height> in pixels, optionally followed by a modifier. In some cases you can omit either width or height.

• 256x256

This specifies the Maximum dimensions for the image, while preserving the aspect ratio of the image. So if your image were actually 512x256 it would be resized to 256x128 in order to fit inside the specified size.


• 256x256!

This specifies the Exact image size, so a 512x256 image would be changed into 256x256, losing the aspect ratio.


• 256x

This specifies the desired width of the target image, leaving the height to be set so as to preserve the aspect ratio.


• x256

This specifies the desired height of the target image, while preserving the aspect ratio.


• 256x256^

This specifies the Minimum size for the target image, so the resized image may be larger than these dimensions.


• 256x256>

This specifies that the image will be resized only if it is Larger than the dimensions.


• 256x256<

This specifies that the image will be resized only if it is Smaller than the dimensions.

Other options exist within the syntax. See the ImageMagick docs for more details.


 

Rails, Paperclip and ImageMagick

Ran into trouble generating Thumbnail images using the Paperclip plugin, which delegates the image manipulation to ImageMagick.

The error was "Paperclip::NotIdentifiedByImageMagickError: /tmp/stream,33194,0.jpg is not recognized by the 'identify' command".

A LOT of people have run into this - here is my solution.

In my setup I'm on MacOSX with a binary download of ImageMagick in /usr/local/ImageMagick-6.6.1/bin and I'm running Rails under Apache/Passenger. I've got Paperclip installed as a plugin.

There are 3 steps needed to get this working:

1: Make sure you have ImageMagick working at the UNIX command line level. This involves adding it to your path and exporting these environment variables (pointing to your ImageMagick installation, of course)

MAGICK_HOME=/usr/local/ImageMagick-6.6.1
DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/ImageMagick-6.6.1/lib

Check that identify works with your images at the command line level. If not then fix those problems first.

2: Tell Paperclip where to find the ImageMagick executables
In config/environment.rb add this at the bottom of the file

Paperclip.options[:command_path] = "/usr/local/ImageMagick-6.6.1/bin"

At this point, after restarting Passenger, you would see that 'identify' is run from within Paperclip but is not able to identify the file... the final step is...

3: Identify needs those two exported environment variables - and Apache/Passenger (or other web servers probably) does not pass those through by default!
In your passenger vhost file add these lines:

SetEnv MAGICK_HOME /usr/local/ImageMagick-6.6.1
SetEnv DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH /usr/local/ImageMagick-6.6.1/lib

Restart apache/passenger and it should work fine.

For me, the binary installation of ImageMagick has worked fine so far. Compiling it yourself is a real pain (make sure you compile for x86-64 if you are on an Intel Mac) - but you don't need to do it. Likewise, you do not need the Rmagick gem if you are using Paperclip, at least for basic image resizing, etc.