Re: [gthumb-list] the ext branch is now public

[Jef Driesen <jefdriesen hotmail com>]

Dr. Michael J. Chudobiak wrote:
> Since you're rewriting everything anyway... can we replace gdk-pixbuf, 
> and move to gegl or something similar (vips, for instance)?
>
> gdk-pixbuf only supports 8-bit rgb, which is inadequate for raw images 
> and newer formats (jpeg2000, even some tiff files).

Is true support for higher than 8-bit images really required for an
image organizer/viewer? If the image loaders could read those images and
provide a 8-bit image for viewing, I think that would already cover most
use cases. Display hardware is 8-bit anyway. For image editing, the
situation is different of course.

> It would also be nice to use the tiling features of these libraries, to 
> allow viewing of huge images without loading every single pixel into memory.

Maybe this could also be handled in the image loading code? When you
want to view an entire image, you only need the image that is at most
the size of the screen. Anything bigger needs to be scaled down before
displaying on the screen. If the loaders support loading the image in a
smaller size, they could do the tiling in the loader itself and give the
application only the smaller image. The same for zooming, where only a
subset of the image is displayed.