Re: VICAR file r/w - status

Robin Rowe wrote:
> Daren,
>
> Glad to hear from you. I was thinking about VICAR. My friend who 
> designed the Mars Pathfinder flight software was here last week for my 
> birthday.
>
>   
Pathfinder, like all the Mars missions, is fantastic! WIth all the Mars 
missions, i can't keep 'em all straight. So much tough competition for 
us Cassini folk!

> Are you using xv VICAR now? Do you convert files using xv or do you have 
> a GIMP plug-in for VICAR?
>
>   
I never attempted a GIMP plug-in though i considered it briefly in 2003. 
Due to 8 bit/channel limitations mainly, but also didn't want to spend 
time of something we couldn't use for at least some production work. 
OTOH, i did hack XV though it is just as limited to 8b/channel. But 
then, the boss _asked_ for a vicar-educted XV.

So far only the boss (Dr. Porco) uses the hacked XV. Sometimes others, 
even I, use it to have quick looks at raw vicar files. XV is really 
aged, clumsy by current standards. Normally we use an in-house web app, 
a complicated but perfectly customized tool for database searching, 
production work, science and whatnot.


>> Now, exactly where to start?   add VICAR to  Glasgow 0.1 since it's the 
>> fresh new thing?  
>>     
>
> If you have a GIMP plug-in it would be trivial to port to CinePaint Film 
> Gimp. Although not binary compatible, many GIMP plug-ins can be built 
> for CinePaint without change. You could use the legacy Film Gimp API 
> supported by Kai-Uwe. Or if you want to work with me you could try the 
> new Glasgow img_img plug-in API. I'd have to walk you through that. 
> Either way, 95% of the code would remain the same. Not a big deal to do 
> both. If you can reuse your VICAR code from xv it should go pretty quick.
>
> Don't use the Glasgow GUI plug-in API. That's a temporary hack pending 
> integration with the img_img API. The img_img program is command-line 
> tool and therefore easier to test and debug than with a GUI. The design 
> goals for the img_img API are to make it easier and faster than the Film 
> Gimp API.
>
> What would you like to do?
>
> Robin
> --
> CinePaint.org
>
>   
Which CinePaints are people using in the real world?

WIth Glasgow young and evolving, though i'd like to educate it in 
matters of VICAR, probably should wait a bit.

I'll work on getting VICAR into the next version of the current 
Cinepaint, with the Film Gimp API. I'm guessing that would be more 
useful to more CinePaint users in the short term.

One question: what to do with all the extra metadata of VICAR images? 
Stuff like telemetry times, uplink
mumbo-jumbo - to show it all in some window? I'm not sure how this would 
be in comparison to whatever metadata appears in the other image formats.

- daren w

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