Re: [grt-talk] 0.2 roadmap

[Nikodemus Siivola]

On Mon, 14 Apr 2003, Jason Dagit wrote:

> I can let you know.  My guess is that to really support multiple
> formats that we will need multiple internal representations OR we will
> have to obtain the full internal representation (as an array or list
> perhaps?) and then export that.
>
> I feel that the latter is a good option.  I hate to have special cases
> for each file format too.

My thought exactly, but may turn out to be necassary depending on what they
want: arrays of integers with bitmasks? arrays of floats? multidimensional
arrays with integers?

> I'm also thinking that we should probably only support non-lossy image
> formats.  Converting to a lossy format should be the decision of the
> user, and to free ourselves of supporting a ton of formats we should
> let them use a program like ImageMagic or Gimp to change between
> formats.

You have a point here, and I definitely consider PNG a priority. However, I
think that supporting *eventually* JPG is important as well for several
reasons:

 * Eventually we will wan't to be able to import images as well, to be used
   as imagemaps, billboards, backgound images, etc. Not importing JPGs
   would be tedious to users, since they are everywhere. JPGs, that is --
   not users. ,)=

 * Ditto for exports: JPGs still have a better support on various browsers,
   and not exporting JPGs would mean that GRT is tedious for someone
   creating web graphics.

 * Support for a few of the most important graphics format is kind of a
   sign of maturity. In the long run this means PNG, JPG, and TIFF in the
   very minimum, but likely some TGA's etc as well. For now PNGs are
   enough.

> I'm thinking (without doing the research yet) we should do tiff
> instead of jpeg.  I think PNG is non-lossy, but I really don't know

Yeah PNG is non-lossy. TIFF would be fine too, for now. BTW: jpeg has a
settable compression level, and at the best setting I think it becomes
non-lossy (at least for all practical purposes).

On a different track: CSG is coming along nicely, but I have a really wierd
artefact that shows up only when a differenced object is illuminated with
two or more lights... More glitches in the trace.lisp, it seems. :(

Cheers,

  -- Nikodemus