Currently, there are multiple different image APIs in the Java ecosystem: AWT, JavaFX, Android, etc. What's worse, the Android platform does not provide support for AWT, making the Java ecosystem even more fragmented.
There are some obvious problems with the current situation: * Third-party libraries that need an image API are difficult to be universal. A practical example: Apache Commons Imaging has been in the alpha stage and cannot release version 1.0. The main reason is that it depends on `java.awt.image`, so it doesn't work on Android. We hope to solve this problem before the official release. * Different image APIs have to repeatedly implement support for reading the same image format (such as JPEG). In fact, AWT, JavaFX, and Android now each implement reading JPEG images. This is a waste. I thought we might be able to create a new module independent of java.desktop that provides a common abstraction for images. It should: * Provides common Image and ImageProvider interfaces that can be implemented by different providers. * Provides a unified abstraction for colors, color spaces, pixel formats, etc. * Provides general and extensible image I/O support. Read/write support should only need to be implemented once per image format. It should be bidirectionally compatible with `javax.imageio`: The implementation of either API can be accessed through the other API. I want to know if this is an idea worth putting into practice? I'm not an expert in this field, so I'm worried about creating designs with many flaws. Therefore, I haven't attempted to implement it yet. If anyone is willing to implement it, I'd like to help. I had sent an email a few days ago but no one responded, so I re-edited it and sent this one. Glavo
