Re: [Openexr-devel] Long Names for Channels and Attributes

[Daniel Léonard]

Hello,

Why not keep the channel name at 32 bytes and add a new "map
attribute" that holds the relationship between short (key) names and
longer (value) names ? It will not break old code, in fact old code
will see the new attribute as an opaque attribute.

User interface code will be responsible for the presentation and the
manipulation of longer names.

A routine could be added in ChannelList to facilitate the usage of
longer names, such as :

   void insert (const char short_name[], const char long_name[],
const Channel &channel);

the current implementation of :

   void insert (const char name[], const Channel &channel);

would be changed to a call to the new insert :

   void ChannelList::insert (const char name[], const Channel &channel)
   {
       this->insert(name, name, channel);
   }

On writing an image, the channel list outputs two attributes : the
channel list then the map.

On reading, the channel list is feed the map attribute.

On encoding, the short name would stay in ASCII while the longer name
could have any encoding (it would require prior knowledge) or use the
encoding scheme for email such as =?iso-8895-1?b?bmloISBuaWgh?= - see
RFC822.

My 0.02 CAD,

Daniel Léonard