[boost] Formal Review of IO and Toolbox extensions to Boost.GIL starts TOMORROW

Subject: [boost] Formal Review of IO and Toolbox extensions to Boost.GIL starts TOMORROW
From: Mateusz Loskot (mateusz_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-11-30 13:01:54

Dear All,

According to the Boost Formal Review Schedule [1],
review of Christian Henning's extensions to the Boost Generic Image
Library (Boost.GIL, [2]), it is:
  * Boost.GIL.IO
  * Boost.GIL.Toolbox
starts on December 1st and lasts until December 10th, 2010.

[1] http://www.boost.org/community/review_schedule.html
[2] http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/release/libs/gil/doc/index.html

===========
What is it?
===========

The Boost.GIL.IO extension provides an easy to use interface for
reading and writing various image formats. It also includes a framework
for adding new formats. The Boost.GIL.IO is indent to replace the
current IO extension which is part of Boost for several years now.

Features:

* A unified way to read and write image encoded in BMP, JPEG, PNG, PNM,
  and TIFF formats. The capabilities to read and write in various
  formats have improved dramatically.

* Image data can be provided via standard file or string streams

The Boost.GIL.Toolbox provides new color spaces
and other small code to ease programming with Boost.GIL.

Features:

* Implementation of color spaces: Gray_Alpha, HSL, HSV, LAB, and XYZ
* Utilities to support dynamic image workflows and color conversions.
* Collection of metafunctions to determine alignment, similarity
  and homogeneity at pixel level.

The Boost.GIL as well as the proposed extensions are provided in
form of a headers-only library Although, some image formats come with
their format dependency, it is corresponding third-party libraries:

JPEG - libjpeg
PNG  - libpng
TIFF - libtiff

===================
Getting the library
===================

The latest version of both extensions can be downloaded as Zip package:

http://gil-contributions.googlecode.com/files/boost_review.zip

or directly from the Subversion repository:

http://code.google.com/p/gil-contributions/source/browse/trunk/gil_2/

and the docs can built as usual with bjam and quickbook tools
from within libs/gil/io_new/doc directory

The libs/gil/io_new/test/readme.txt provides a step by step guide to
configuring, building and running the unit tests.

The boost_review.zip is about 20MB due to its extensive collection of
test images. They are part of the test suite to make sure that different
variations of each image format is read and written correctly.

Please, be aware no guarantee can be given that all formats in their all
variants are completely supported.

================
Writing a review
================

If you feel the new IO and Toolbox are interesting extensions
to the Boost.GIL library, then please submit your review
to the developer list (preferably), or
to the review manager (mateusz at loskot dot _n_e_t_)

Here are some questions you might want to answer in your review:

- What is your evaluation of the design?
- What is your evaluation of the implementation?
- What is your evaluation of the documentation?
- What is your evaluation of the potential usefulness of the extensions?
- Did you try to use the extensions? With what compiler? Did you have
any problems?
- How much effort did you put into your evaluation? A glance? A quick
- reading? In-depth study?
- Are you knowledgeable about the problem domain?

And finally, every review should answer this question:

- Do you think the extensions should be accepted as a part of Boost.GIL
library?

Be sure to say this explicitly so that your other comments don't
obscure your overall opinion.

Mateusz
Review Manager for the proposed Boost.GIL.IO and
    Boost.GIL.Toolbox extensions

-- 
Mateusz Loskot, http://mateusz.loskot.net
Charter Member of OSGeo, http://osgeo.org
Member of ACCU, http://accu.org