Support .heic files (HEIF format or High Efficiency Image File format)

[bernd-wechner]

Seeing a lot of these from iphones. Be nice if pix natively supported them.

[leigh123linux]

gthumb has a commit for this using libheif.

https://github.com/GNOME/gthumb/commit/b2d5dffc3c22a5fa1253efbceb71000e48c03b9d

[bernd-wechner]

gthumb has a commit for this using libheif.

GNOME/gthumb@b2d5dff

Nice. Not in the current build in the mint repos mind you. And not a pix implementation either ;-). Hoping Pix can introduce this.

[leigh123linux]

@bernd-wechner pix was forked from gthumb https://github.com/linuxmint/pix/commit/783a64bd5ea60fe0717764fd3ecf5fea494b3580

[bernd-wechner]

Sure, but pix has a much nice UI. And pix should support .heic files!

[darkshram]

Installing the pixbuf-loaders for libheif, avif, and jxl helps solving the issue of viewing this image formats with Pix and Xviewer, but one good reason to back-port not just heif, but also avif and jxl plugins is making Pix stop spaming ~/.xsession_errors with hundreds/thousands of lines with ** (gdk-pixbuf-thumbnailer:23224): WARNING **: XX:XX:XX.XX: Could not thumbnail. Example: I just happen to have several folders with several hundreds for images with some of this formats, so every time I access one of this folders, the ~/xsession_errors file grows ridiculously big and makes it harder to diagnose some other applications.

[bernd-wechner]

Installing the pixbuf-loaders for libheif, avif, and jxl helps solving the issue

Can you provide instructions on how to install pixbuf-loaders for libheif, avif, and jxl and what you mean by "helps". Does it solve the issue or not?

[darkshram]

@bernd-wechner:

Fedora and derivatives: dnf -y install heif-pixbuf-loader Debian/Ubuntu/Linuxmint and derivatives: apt-get install heif-pixbuf-loader

For other pixbuf-loaders in Fedora and derivatives: dnf -y install avif-pixbuf-loader jp2-pixbuf-loader jxl-pixbuf-loader webp-pixbuf-loader Do not know if they are available in other distros with this same name schema.

[darkshram]

@bernd-wechner Installing pixbuf-loaders partially solves this issue because they enable Pix and Xviewer (and other GTK-based image viewer applications) to support these formats. A native support (as does gThumb) would be better so the user does not have to rely on installing other packages.

Running Pix like this: pix 2>/dev/null or creating an alias (alias pix="/usr/bin/pix 2>/dev/null") solves the ~/.xsession_errors spamming.

[kmkom]

I support the proposal to support graphic files in HEIF format (file extension .heif or .heic). A full support in Mint would be very nice! For Nemo you can install "heif-thumbnailer" to get thumbnails.

"heif-gdk-pixbuf" should bring support for HEIF in pix, but pix then shows me only a small thumbnail, not the actual image.(?)

HEIF is now supported by all operating systems (Android, macOS, iOS, Windows -> see Wikipedia). One more reason to support the format in Mint out of the box.

[clefebvre]

HEIF/AVIF support added in xviewer master and upcoming Mint 21.2.

[clefebvre]

Pix rebased on gthumb 3.12, so it now includes support for JXL, HEIF/AVIF.