libpng.txt - A description on how to use and modify libpng

 libpng version 1.2.7 - September 12, 2004
 Updated and distributed by Glenn Randers-Pehrson
 <glennrp@users.sourceforge.net>
 Copyright (c) 1998-2004 Glenn Randers-Pehrson
 For conditions of distribution and use, see copyright
 notice in png.h.

 based on:

 libpng 1.0 beta 6  version 0.96 May 28, 1997
 Updated and distributed by Andreas Dilger
 Copyright (c) 1996, 1997 Andreas Dilger

 libpng 1.0 beta 2 - version 0.88  January 26, 1996
 For conditions of distribution and use, see copyright
 notice in png.h. Copyright (c) 1995, 1996 Guy Eric
 Schalnat, Group 42, Inc.

 Updated/rewritten per request in the libpng FAQ
 Copyright (c) 1995, 1996 Frank J. T. Wojcik
 December 18, 1995 & January 20, 1996

I. Introduction

This file describes how to use and modify the PNG reference library
(known as libpng) for your own use.  There are five sections to this
file: introduction, structures, reading, writing, and modification and
configuration notes for various special platforms.  In addition to this
file, example.c is a good starting point for using the library, as
it is heavily commented and should include everything most people
will need.  We assume that libpng is already installed; see the
INSTALL file for instructions on how to install libpng.

Libpng was written as a companion to the PNG specification, as a way
of reducing the amount of time and effort it takes to support the PNG
file format in application programs.

The PNG specification (second edition), November 2003, is available as
a W3C Recommendation and as an ISO Standard (ISO/IEC 15948:2003 (E)) at
<http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/REC-PNG-20031110/
The W3C and ISO documents have identical technical content.

The PNG-1.2 specification is available at
<http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/documents/>

The PNG-1.0 specification is available
as RFC 2083 <http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/documents/> and as a
W3C Recommendation <http://www.w3.org/TR/REC.png.html>. Some
additional chunks are described in the special-purpose public chunks
documents at <http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/documents/>.

Other information
about PNG, and the latest version of libpng, can be found at the PNG home
page, <http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/>.

Most users will not have to modify the library significantly; advanced
users may want to modify it more.  All attempts were made to make it as
complete as possible, while keeping the code easy to understand.
Currently, this library only supports C.  Support for other languages
is being considered.

Libpng has been designed to handle multiple sessions at one time,
to be easily modifiable, to be portable to the vast majority of
machines (ANSI, K&R, 16-, 32-, and 64-bit) available, and to be easy
to use.  The ultimate goal of libpng is to promote the acceptance of
the PNG file format in whatever way possible.  While there is still
work to be done (see the TODO file), libpng should cover the
majority of the needs of its users.

Libpng uses zlib for its compression and decompression of PNG files.
Further information about zlib, and the latest version of zlib, can
be found at the zlib home page, <http://www.info-zip.org/pub/infozip/zlib/>.
The zlib compression utility is a general purpose utility that is
useful for more than PNG files, and can be used without libpng.
See the documentation delivered with zlib for more details.
You can usually find the source files for the zlib utility wherever you
find the libpng source files.

Libpng is thread safe, provided the threads are using different
instances of the structures.  Each thread should have its own
png_struct and png_info instances, and thus its own image.
Libpng does not protect itself against two threads using the
same instance of a structure.  Note: thread safety may be defeated
by use of some of the MMX assembler code in pnggccrd.c, which is only
compiled when the user defines PNG_THREAD_UNSAFE_OK.

II. Structures

There are two main structures that are important to libpng, png_struct
and png_info.  The first, png_struct, is an internal structure that
will not, for the most part, be used by a user except as the first
variable passed to every libpng function call.

The png_info structure is designed to provide information about the
PNG file.  At one time, the fields of png_info were intended to be
directly accessible to the user.  However, this tended to cause problems
with applications using dynamically loaded libraries, and as a result
a set of interface functions for png_info (the png_get_*() and png_set_*()
functions) was developed.  The fields of png_info are still available for
older applications, but it is suggested that applications use the new
interfaces if at all possible.

Applications that do make direct access to the members of png_struct (except
for png_ptr->jmpbuf) must be recompiled whenever the library is updated,
and applications that make direct access to the members of png_info must
be recompiled if they were compiled or loaded with libpng version 1.0.6,
in which the members were in a different order.  In version 1.0.7, the
members of the png_info structure reverted to the old order, as they were
in versions 0.97c through 1.0.5.  Starting with version 2.0.0, both
structures are going to be hidden, and the contents of the structures will
only be accessible through the png_get/png_set functions.

The png.h header file is an invaluable reference for programming with libpng.
And while I'm on the topic, make sure you include the libpng header file:

#include <png.h>

III. Reading

We'll now walk you through the possible functions to call when reading
in a PNG file sequentially, briefly explaining the syntax and purpose
of each one.  See example.c and png.h for more detail.  While
progressive reading is covered in the next section, you will still
need some of the functions discussed in this section to read a PNG
file.

Setup

You will want to do the I/O initialization(*) before you get into libpng,
so if it doesn't work, you don't have much to undo.  Of course, you
will also want to insure that you are, in fact, dealing with a PNG
file.  Libpng provides a simple check to see if a file is a PNG file.
To use it, pass in the first 1 to 8 bytes of the file to the function
png_sig_cmp(), and it will return 0 if the bytes match the corresponding
bytes of the PNG signature, or nonzero otherwise.  Of course, the more bytes
you pass in, the greater the accuracy of the prediction.

If you are intending to keep the file pointer open for use in libpng,
you must ensure you don't read more than 8 bytes from the beginning
of the file, and you also have to make a call to png_set_sig_bytes_read()
with the number of bytes you read from the beginning.  Libpng will
then only check the bytes (if any) that your program didn't read.

(*): If you are not using the standard I/O functions, you will need
to replace them with custom functions.  See the discussion under
Customizing libpng.


    FILE *fp = fopen(file_name, "rb");
    if (!fp)
    {
        return (ERROR);
    }
    fread(header, 1, number, fp);
    is_png = !png_sig_cmp(header, 0, number);
    if (!is_png)
    {
        return (NOT_PNG);
    }


Next, png_struct and png_info need to be allocated and initialized.  In
order to ensure that the size of these structures is correct even with a
dynamically linked libpng, there are functions to initialize and
allocate the structures.  We also pass the library version, optional
pointers to error handling functions, and a pointer to a data struct for
use by the error functions, if necessary (the pointer and functions can
be NULL if the default error handlers are to be used).  See the section
on Changes to Libpng below regarding the old initialization functions.
The structure allocation functions quietly return NULL if they fail to
create the structure, so your application should check for that.

    png_structp png_ptr = png_create_read_struct
       (PNG_LIBPNG_VER_STRING, (png_voidp)user_error_ptr,
        user_error_fn, user_warning_fn);
    if (!png_ptr)
        return (ERROR);

    png_infop info_ptr = png_create_info_struct(png_ptr);
    if (!info_ptr)
    {
        png_destroy_read_struct(&png_ptr,
           (png_infopp)NULL, (png_infopp)NULL);
        return (ERROR);
    }

    png_infop end_info = png_create_info_struct(png_ptr);
    if (!end_info)
    {
        png_destroy_read_struct(&png_ptr, &info_ptr,
          (png_infopp)NULL);
        return (ERROR);
    }

If you want to use your own memory allocation routines,
define PNG_USER_MEM_SUPPORTED and use
png_create_read_struct_2() instead of png_create_read_struct():

    png_structp png_ptr = png_create_read_struct_2
       (PNG_LIBPNG_VER_STRING, (png_voidp)user_error_ptr,
        user_error_fn, user_warning_fn, (png_voidp)
        user_mem_ptr, user_malloc_fn, user_free_fn);

The error handling routines passed to png_create_read_struct()
and the memory alloc/free routines passed to png_create_struct_2()
are only necessary if you are not using the libpng supplied error
handling and memory alloc/free functions.

When libpng encounters an error, it expects to longjmp back
to your routine.  Therefore, you will need to call setjmp and pass
your png_jmpbuf(png_ptr).  If you read the file from different
routines, you will need to update the jmpbuf field every time you enter
a new routine that will call a png_*() function.

See your documentation of setjmp/longjmp for your compiler for more
information on setjmp/longjmp.  See the discussion on libpng error
handling in the Customizing Libpng section below for more information
on the libpng error handling.  If an error occurs, and libpng longjmp's
back to your setjmp, you will want to call png_destroy_read_struct() to
free any memory.

    if (setjmp(png_jmpbuf(png_ptr)))
    {
        png_destroy_read_struct(&png_ptr, &info_ptr,
           &end_info);
        fclose(fp);
        return (ERROR);
    }

If you would rather avoid the complexity of setjmp/longjmp issues,
you can compile libpng with PNG_SETJMP_NOT_SUPPORTED, in which case
errors will result in a call to PNG_ABORT() which defaults to abort().

Now you need to set up the input code.  The default for libpng is to
use the C function fread().  If you use this, you will need to pass a
valid FILE * in the function png_init_io().  Be sure that the file is
opened in binary mode.  If you wish to handle reading data in another
way, you need not call the png_init_io() function, but you must then
implement the libpng I/O methods discussed in the Customizing Libpng
section below.

    png_init_io(png_ptr, fp);

If you had previously opened the file and read any of the signature from
the beginning in order to see if this was a PNG file, you need to let
libpng know that there are some bytes missing from the start of the file.

    png_set_sig_bytes(png_ptr, number);

Setting up callback code

You can set up a callback function to handle any unknown chunks in the
input stream. You must supply the function

    read_chunk_callback(png_ptr ptr,
         png_unknown_chunkp chunk);
    {
       /* The unknown chunk structure contains your
          chunk data: */
           png_byte name[5];
           png_byte *data;
           png_size_t size;
       /* Note that libpng has already taken care of
          the CRC handling */

       /* put your code here.  Return one of the
          following: */

       return (-n); /* chunk had an error */
       return (0); /* did not recognize */
       return (n); /* success */
    }

(You can give your function another name that you like instead of
"read_chunk_callback")

To inform libpng about your function, use

    png_set_read_user_chunk_fn(png_ptr, user_chunk_ptr,
        read_chunk_callback);

This names not only the callback function, but also a user pointer that
you can retrieve with

    png_get_user_chunk_ptr(png_ptr);

At this point, you can set up a callback function that will be
called after each row has been read, which you can use to control
a progress meter or the like.  It's demonstrated in pngtest.c.
You must supply a function

    void read_row_callback(png_ptr ptr, png_uint_32 row,
       int pass);
    {
      /* put your code here */
    }

(You can give it another name that you like instead of "read_row_callback")

To inform libpng about your function, use

    png_set_read_status_fn(png_ptr, read_row_callback);

Width and height limits