Re: [Gimp-developer] lcms high bit depth update: now that it works, adding and improving functionality

[Graeme Gill <graeme2 argyllcms com>]

Michael Henning wrote:
> I want a generic mechanism to
> take any ICC profile and turn it into a babl format. Øyvind indicated
> that this is similar to how indexed formats already work (take a
> palette and turn it into a babl format), so this wouldn't need vast
> amounts of new code.

Take a look at the ICC file format. It is not something simple
like a palette, it has about 34 different tag types, many of which
are non-trivial to parse, represent and use. (The ICC also has
a number of addition tag types such as floating point and spectral
data tags waiting in the wings.) Why would you want to write (and
maintain in the face of ICC format changes) duplicates of all the
proven and tested logic that already exists in libraries like lcms,
icclib etc. to parse and interpret ICC profiles ?

If you want to tag a colorspace when it is defined by an ICC profile,
then the simplest thing to do is to tag it with the ICC profile. Store
(or reference) the profile. Use all the existing ICC format code
out there. Don't start on a mountain of a project to turn an ICC profile
into some other format, unless you have an absolutely compelling reason,
and lots of time on your hands...

Graeme Gill.