sane-project-website/old-archive/1999-08/0029.html

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<!-- subject="Re: RGBI (was Re: xsane-0.31 available)" -->
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<title>sane-devel: Re: RGBI (was Re: xsane-0.31 available)</title>
<h1>Re: RGBI (was Re: xsane-0.31 available)</h1>
<b>Oliver Rauch</b> (<a href="mailto:oliver.rauch@Wolfsburg.DE"><i>oliver.rauch@Wolfsburg.DE</i></a>)<br>
<i>Tue, 03 Aug 1999 20:17:39 +0200</i>
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Nick Lamb wrote:<br>
<p>
<i>&gt; If you don't have any technical reasons (and "I think Infrared is a lot</i><br>
<i>&gt; like Alpha" isn't a technical reason) for removing this frame format,</i><br>
<i>&gt; which IS ALREADY IN USE then please put it back. The fact that saving</i><br>
<i>&gt; RGBI-&gt;RGBA might not be faithful is not helped by renaming RGBI.</i><br>
<i>&gt;</i><br>
<p>
Hi Nick,<br>
if something is already in use or not is not relevant!<br>
IT IS NOT DEFINED IN THE SANE STANDARD,<br>
WHAT WE HAVE IS A HACK AND NOTHING ELSE!<br>
<p>
If it is stupid to save an RGB+infrared as RGBA then you must tell<br>
how to save this format. Ok, I can copy it to /dev/null, but I don`t think<br>
this is what you want.<br>
If we save it as red,green,blue,infrared than it is the same format the<br>
scanner sends, so the SANE_FRAME_RAW would do exactly the same<br>
you want. If you do not define a image-file format for this, we can do<br>
it only this way!<br>
<p>
<p>
<i>&gt; I see no sign of "thousands of SANE_FRAME_WHATEVER" -- Come back with</i><br>
<i>&gt; this doom-laden message when we have even TEN such frame types.</i><br>
<p>
It is not good to add one format that does not make sense. So we should not wait<br>
until<br>
we have 5 bad formats.<br>
<p>
I don`t say that we should not add SANE_FRAME_INFRARED or RGBI.<br>
I only say it does not make any sense if we do not define how to save and handle<br>
them.<br>
<p>
As long as there is no file format for RGBIr and another one for RGBUv<br>
and we have to handle it the same way and ony the user knows the difference,<br>
why should we add two different formats for this.<br>
<p>
We add SANE_FRAME_RAW and the user has to give the file a name that<br>
tells him what is in the file.<br>
<p>
<p>
<i>&gt; I can't see a use for SANE_FRAME_RAW -- If I receive a SANE_FRAME_RAW I</i><br>
<i>&gt; am now the proud owner of some random bytes. The contents are totally</i><br>
<i>&gt; undefined, so why use SANE at all?</i><br>
<p>
That is exact what I say but you did not answer my question until now:<br>
HOW SHALL A FRONTEND HANDLE THE RGBI FORMAT?<br>
<p>
I make the opposite suggestions:<br>
1) A frontend knows how to handle an alpha channel, so we should add it as<br>
a sane frame format.<br>
2) If you want to send data to the frontend and you do not say how to display<br>
it,<br>
we only can handle it as raw data. This does make sense because you may<br>
want to work with this data with your own software but you need a program<br>
to get this data from the scanner/image generating device.<br>
<p>
<p>
<i>&gt; SANE_FRAME_CMYK would be useful only if someone made a device which</i><br>
<i>&gt; exports such data. I'm not aware of any such devices.</i><br>
<p>
If someone needs it, we can add this without any problems because we know how<br>
a frontend has to handle it!<br>
<p>
<i>&gt;</i><br>
<i>&gt;</i><br>
<i>&gt; SANE_FRAME_JPEG is useful, and was proposed (in some form) for SANE 2.0</i><br>
<i>&gt; Since we now have someone on the list who wants to export this kind of</i><br>
<i>&gt; frame, we should try to see what can be done to accomodate it ASAP.</i><br>
<p>
Ok, lets add it, where is the problem?<br>
<p>
Bye<br>
Oliver<br>
<p>
<p>
<pre>
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EMAIL: <a href="mailto:Oliver.Rauch@Wolfsburg.DE">Oliver.Rauch@Wolfsburg.DE</a>
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<p>
<p>
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<pre>
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<p>
<ul>
<!-- next="start" -->
<li> <b>Next message:</b> <a href="0030.html">Oliver Rauch: "Re: RGBI (was Re: xsane-0.31 available)"</a>
<li> <b>Previous message:</b> <a href="0028.html">Oliver Rauch: "Re: SANE_FRAME Formats (was Re: xsane-0.31 available)"</a>
<li> <b>Maybe in reply to:</b> <a href="0025.html">Nick Lamb: "RGBI (was Re: xsane-0.31 available)"</a>
<!-- nextthread="start" -->
<li> <b>Next in thread:</b> <a href="0030.html">Oliver Rauch: "Re: RGBI (was Re: xsane-0.31 available)"</a>
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