Subject: Re: [README] Re: XP design for image support
From: Dom Lachowicz (cinamod@hotmail.com)
Date: Fri Apr 20 2001 - 09:23:08 CDT
> > Load type foo
> > Render type foo
> > Save type foo in my file format
> >
> > No conversions needed.
> >
>
>I am dead set against this solution. If you don't understand
>why (based on the previous discussions about cross platform
>interoperability and what I like to believe is common sense),
>I'm sorry.
I'm not. I fail to believe that this hurts interoperability. Coding to the
least commom denominator is wrong! You get an application that just works
"ok" but fails to excel.
<snip to avoid further flaming>
>"But what if I pass around a Bonobo object ... they won't
>get that so why treat images differently?"
>- This is true, but this is also totally different. I can
>embed images into my Word document and have them show up
>on any other Word system/reader, assuming I didn't embed
>the imaging program. I can't embed an excel spreadsheet
>and be _guaranteed_ that the end user will see it.
>
Very true. But we're considering the case where excel-like functionality
exists on all platforms, which thus makes the above argument moot.
>"But what about fonts ... if I use a font that some other
>user doesn't have then they won't see it so why treat images
>differently?"
>- This is also true, but we make a best effort where possible
>to map "unkown fonts" to a font that is available on the
>system so that while the formatting may get screwed up, at
>least the document is readable (potentially). In fact we
>already have issues with formatting since the glyph metrics
>for TNR on QNX are different from Windows so acheiving a
>perfect match is next to impossible.
No we don't. We fall back to Times Rew Roman (Nimbus Roman 9L). Oh phooey,
you don't have that chinese font... Well, you get to see lots of squares on
your monitor and *not* glyphs. I can hardly think of a lossier example than
this, *including* images. Our primary purpose is to markup and layout text.
*Word* processor. But my solution would let us render these "chinese" images
on your boxen...
>I hope that this will pull us all back to reality. Our
>framework is well set in place and IMHO just needs a bit
>of tweaking to allow the above to all happen properly (I
>think that it already does for the most part with the
>exception of the scaling -> saving). This way the import
>classes can be written to use system services for each
>platform and we just need to be able to have our importer
>classes handle that "ambiguity" ... perhaps by adding a
>platform specific directory to our already XP import/export
>stuff.
Don't kid yourself. Our framework re. image handling has a *lot* of flaws
and shortcomings in it. We have to:
1) Follow different code paths to load/render different image types
2) Can't rotate inline images
3) Can't scale inline images
And that's just off of the top of my head. Anyone not think those are
useful?
Grumpy Smurf
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