Re: Gnome Media Library

[Mo McKinlay <mmckinlay labs interopen org>]

# In a thread about image saving in gdk-pixbuf there was (as much as
# I remember) the final consensus, that implementing universal saving
# interface is not a good thing. Every file format simply has a bit too much
# and too different adjustable parameters. Universal writing interface would
# probably ignore most of them, thus generating less-than-optimal quality
# files.

# Or am I missed something?

No, you haven't - although it does assume a particular way of doing
things.

You could use the lowest-common-denominator, in which case you're almost
always going to loose quality. Or you go to the other end of the spectrum,
in which case unsupported attributes may be lost if the format doesn't
support them, or perhaps "dithered" (or the feature-equivalent of) into
the file.

Or, you could find some sort of generally agreed compromise. 

The problem you have is that NOT having a standard interface makes
applications turn out horribly [coded], and it's absolute hell to add
support for new formats. Obviously it has to be thought about very
carefully, discussed, re-thought about, re-discussed, and finally agreed
upon before being put into practice.

You might want to look at the way that the GNU BFD library handles binary
object file formats (part of binutils) - it's the same answer to the same
problem dealing with a different type of file (i.e., object files instead
of multimedia files).

-- 
Mo McKinlay                                T: +44 (0) 709 22 55 05  x1
Chief Software Architect                   F: +44 (0) 709 22 55 05  x3
inter/open                                 E: mmckinlay@labs.interopen.org
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