Posted by
Albert Cardona on
Mar 09, 2009; 5:29pm
URL: http://imagej.273.s1.nabble.com/Some-thoughts-about-ImageJ-tp3693353p3693355.html
Wilhem,
> Does this sound completely insane? Is it too late for this? Anyone
> interested in sharing ideas or even in collaborating (eventually)?
There is a growing group of people interested in rewriting at least parts
of
ImageJ. In very short, this is how I envision the process:
1. Create the underlying data structures as classes, but based on
interfaces.
The goals are many. First, being able to run ImageJ with different GUI
toolkits
(java 3D comes to mind), or with none at all (headless, or as a library).
Second, to implement different data I/O routines and caching (like paged
memory
blocks based on cubes, or on slices--the current model--, or in combination
with a pyramid strategy. Third, to represent images as tensors; that is,
with
any number of dimensions (color channels, time, alpha, anything), all
seamlessly accessible. The current ImageJ datastructures would be a subset.
2. Provide interfaces for all the current set of ImageJ core classes, to
set
a layer of compatibility with current plugins.
All that current plugins would need is a recompile. Some plugins would
break:
those relying on direct access to public fields, like ImagePlus.changes
flag.
But such breaking changes would not be too hard to fix; the key element
here
being to focus one's time and resources on plugins of interest. Those
plugins
without source code available would limit themselves to run with current
ImageJ, which is just fine.
Some of the work above has started, so far uncoordinated.
A major concern is awareness: ImageJ is a lot more than just the ij.jar.
It's
the life work of Wayne, is the knitting of a very large and very diverse
interest group, and it's the inertia of the current user model and the
constrains of the data structures. Changing the latter may break the link
with
the rest. Are you ready to commit to a project that would deliver it all,
beyond the academic circles? Otherwise it would all be just an exercise,
like
yet one more unpolished and unmaintained matlab script released with a
computer
science paper, no matter how good or how promising.
Albert
--
Albert Cardona
http://albert.rierol.net