libmng data-push mechanism(s)

Alex & Ralph,

The data you're wanting to push into libmng is obviously in some memory-
buffer.

The first question is: how volatile is that buffer? If it remains available for the 
lifetime of the animation great. But I doubt if that's the case.

So the second question is: can onwership of this buffer be relinquished?
Eg. can libmng take ownership of the buffer and perform the free() call?
If so it could save a buffer-copy operation (which Ralph seemed anxious 
about, and for good reasons of course).

But I *will* have to buffer the data inside libmng until it (libmng) is ready to read 
some more. Changing the whole reader-mechanism is pretty much beyond the 
scope of the current excercise.

If libmng can take ownership of your buffer the costs are negligable. 
Otherwise the whole P/M/JNG stream will be copied in memory at least once 
just for the pushing to work.

It is again (but only the useful stuff) copied inside libmng into more suitable 
buffers for playback (unless the caching has been turned off by the App or 
with a nEED "CACHEOFF" chunk; the latter specifically for video-like MNG-
streams with no LOOP/TERM).

Of course I can also offer both methods (for reasons of flexibility) where in 
the one case ownership is transferred and in the other the buffer gets copied 
to a new one. That way you (and the next guy on the block) could decide 
which method would suite your needs best.

All in all I think it shouldn't be more than a couple of hours of work. The key 
issue will be when these hours will be floating past with nothing more 
pressing to fill them with...

Gerard


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