[IPOL discuss] Software Guidelines, 3rd draft and path to adoption

[Nicolas Limare]

Hi,

> I agree with Mauricio in accepting programs that can only read PPM or
> PGM formats (and even PFM).  This is the easiest way to write a
> program that does not depend on any external libraries, not even
> libpng, yet provides almost all the required flexibility.

OK for PBM/PGM/PPM, as defined by netpbm:
- http://netpbm.sourceforge.net/doc/pbm.html
- http://netpbm.sourceforge.net/doc/pgm.html
- http://netpbm.sourceforge.net/doc/ppm.html.

PFM, on the other side, is not as well documented as the 3 other
formats. The netpbm doc says "There are multiple similar formats known
as PFM in the world, none of them authoritatively documented."
Moreover, very few programs are able to read, write and convert
from/to PFM, so people downloading a PFM-only software from IPOL will
probably have some difficulties using it. And it will be a problem for
the demo system too. So I yould prefer not to allow PFM. I know TIFF
is a very heavy format, but at least it is standardized and can store
floating-point values.

> Since adding formats to this list makes the requirements weaker,
> nobody will be harmed by enlarging this list, so the revisions needed
> to enlarge this list could pass silently in the future.

IPOL may be harmed if we allow badly defined formats, input formats
hard to support in the demo system, or formats hard to produce for the
users of the code. So I think any new format should require at least a
short explanation of how and where it is defined, how it us supported,
and how useful it is, just like new libraries.

For the ASCII numeric text output mentioned by Mauricio, I propose to
add CSV as a possible format.

-- 
Nicolas LIMARE - CMLA - ENS Cachan    http://www.cmla.ens-cachan.fr/~limare/
IPOL - image processing on line                          http://www.ipol.im/
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