Re: [boost] GIL - Generic Image Library Review - Begins October 5

From: Lubomir Bourdev (lbourdev_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-10-11 16:10:58

Sebastian Redl wrote:
> Still, it might be called a mistake in the concept foundation of the
> library that the independent concept of Colour is missing.
> 

Sebastian,

There are trade-offs in introducing the concept of a Color separate from
that of a Pixel Value. On the one hand, it seems natural to have the
concept of a color value in an imaging library, as it plays an important
role.

On the other hand, a Color is exactly equivalent to a Pixel Value.
Introducing two concepts that are identical might confuse people - they
may wonder how is one different from the other, how do you convert from
one to the other, etc. That means more concepts, more explanations and
longer documentation. It might be a good idea, however, to add a
sentence clarifying that a pixel is used to represent a color value even
outside the context of an image.

It would certainly be a mistake to introduce new code in GIL to deal
with colors. This may add further complexity and opportunity for
performance degradation.

Lubomir