On Dec 20, 2011, at 2:02, Damjan Jovanovic <damjan....@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 9:33 PM, Gary Lucas <gwlu...@sonalysts.com> wrote: > >> I see there's some discussion about the next release of Sanselan between >> Damjan Jovanovic, Gary Gregory (I'm the other Gary) and some of the Apache >> community leaders. My name was even mentioned... so I thought I'd chime in. >> >> First off, Damjan posted a note to the issue tracker that my submitted >> patches for performance enhancements aren't going to make it into the 1.0 >> release. While I'm naturally disappointed about that, I can understand the >> perspective that it is probably the best choice at this time. Also, a delay >> would give us more time to refine the concept before we start applying it >> to other areas of the code. The only point I would add here is that I >> think Sanselan does have problems with performance and that those problems >> are really unnecessary. Java is plenty fast nowadays and there's nothing >> wrong with the Sanselan code per se, just a rather an unlucky choice on >> which API element to use for setting pixel values in an image. I think >> that the kind of changes proposed for one small area of the code base (TIFF >> images) would have applicability to other parts of the code. I also think >> that performance is probably one of the issues might keep Sanselan from >> reaching a broader user base. So I'd encourage everyone interested in >> Sanselan development to keep that in mind for future releases. >> > > No, I never said your patches wouldn't make it into the 1.0 release. I said > they wouldn't make it into the "next" release, which at the time I was > thinking would be 0.98, and would be released within days. Things have > changed since then, the next release will be 1.0, and it's due later, so > maybe your patches will make it. > > Also I care very much about performance - in fact right now I am optimizing > my TIFF CCITT T.4 and T.6 compression algorithms that I will commit later - > but premature optimization is said to be the root of all evil, and the > state of Sanselan's TIFF parser strikes me as very premature (eg. TIFF is > fundamentally a multi-image file format, but there was no support for > reading multiple images from TIFF files until my patch yesterday). > > In terms of renaming the project from "Sanselan" to "Image" or something >> like that. Well, I think the key issue here is that the change in name >> would signal a much more ambitious concept of what the project is for. To >> me, the name Sanselan says "I'm a small and unassuming software package >> focused on a particular niche application." The name "Image" or something >> like that says "I'm gunning for the JAI, and it's high time somebody did it >> too". I wonder if the reason that the original authors chose the obscure >> name was that their intentions were fairly modest, though with the amount >> of work that went into Sanselan it seems a shame not to promote it. So >> I'm strictly on the fence about the whole name change thing. >> >> > Sanselan seems to have started as an image metadata extraction/manipulation > project. For example the TIFF image support is flaky, but the parts of TIFF > used for JPEG EXIF metadata are excellent. > > >> Finally, I wanted to ask if there would be any problems in changing the >> compiler targets in the pom.xml to 1.5 for release 1.0. The current >> compiler targets are set up to compile with Java 1.4 features, but I just >> switched them to 1.5 and everything build and tested without errors. I'm >> not proposing that anyone go make code changes to Sanselan so that it uses >> generics or other 1.5 fixtures. Just compile the current code to >> accommodate 1.5 rather than being stuck in the 1.4 feature set. By >> switching release 1.0 to Java 1.5 does have the advantage that in any new >> work, coders will be able to use 1.5 without compatibility issues. >> >> > I was hoping for several small releases with incremental changes, but since > we seem to be going the route of a big bang release with many changes, we > might as well do the 1.5 upgrade too. I like release early release often. My intent is to not have big bang releases. If someone wants to push a 0.x release now, please do so. For 1.0, we should make all big changes before 1.0, which may feel like a big bang release. Anything that breaks compatibility should be done now before a 1.0. Using java 5 can break source compat once add generics, so you only want to do that when you have to. If the java 5 changes are not user visible like using enhanced for loops the you can do it anytime. But, if someone wants to put the time in now, go for it! :) Performance improvements can come in after for example but I'll let someone else make that call. Now is the time to get the API right. Gary > > >> Gary >> >> >> >> >> Computer Programming is the Art of the Possible >> Gary W. Lucas >> Sonalysts, Inc. >> 215 Parkway North >> Waterford, CT 06385 >> > > > Damjan --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@commons.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@commons.apache.org
