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

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