Fwd: My KImageEffect code

[Frerich Raabe]

On Fri, Nov 26, 2004 at 03:09:13PM +0100 or thereabouts, David Faure wrote:
> ----------  Forwarded Message  ----------
> As you probably know, most of the more advanced effects I contributed to 
> KImageEffect from ImageMagick are rather buggy and have not been updated in a 
> long time. They were direct ports from ImageMagick and a lot of the stuff is 
> C and not C++, (ie: malloc), inefficent, or just plain wrong. The latter one 
> quite embarrasingly so now that I look at it :P Simple mistakes like the 
> algorithm using the wrong bit depth or improper HSV<->RGB code.

For what it's worth, KImageEffect seems to work good enough for the
majority, no? I bet you as the author are aware of a number of issues, but I
cannot remember any threads about it being insufficient, nor did I notice
too many (any) bug reports about it.

> I haven't sent any patches because I have been working on a GUI-independent 
> image library with an API similiar to QImage. I haven't used QImage based 
> code in a long, long time. Nonetheless I've updated and fixed most of the 
> graphics algorithms for my library and the code is much, much better. 
> Standard C++ and everything works like it's supposed to, (as far as I 
> know ;-)
> 
> If the KDE core team is interested I could port this code back from my library 
> to KImageEffect. It would be very straightforward since their basic API's are 
> nearly identical. This would be for KDE4.0, tho, since it would likely be 
> binary incompatible.

The main issue is maintainership. From what I gathered, Maksim is the only
one works on that stuff every now and then (I apologize in advance in case
I overlooked anybody :-), so the last call is probably his. I for one am not
aware of any problems with KImageEffect which would justify rewriting the
image effects from scratch (and then finding a poor soul who has to get into
the new code).

On a sidenote, I suspect the 'Standard C++' part is just doomed to get dragged
and drowned into the "How standard is The Standard really?" discussion.

> The other option would be to drop the ImageMagick based effects from 
> KImageEffect. I think this would be a shame since I have better code, but 
> since I am no longer working with QImage it may make sense. It's also 
> questionable if the base libraries really need things like equalize, or if it 
> would be better for developers to use a second library if they need the more 
> sophisticated effects.

You imply a third option which is to leave things in kdelibs as they are (and
continue living with whatever flaws there are) and make people who need more
sophisticated support for image effects aware of your stuff (which presumably
is available as a $OSS_LICENSE licensed library somwhere?). And this is what I
vote for.

- Frerich