> Hello Nick,
>
> In my opinion Andreas is right that it is a bad idea to
> add each frame format to enum SANE_FRAME_*.
> It is much more simple to extend the standard to support
> new formats when we define the frame format in a string.
I'm not entirely sure I agree about that, but let's see where this is
going...
> The question is if the string has to be a string defined by MIME.
> I did not read the MIME specs but as far as I know there are
> a lot of formats listed and MIME allows to extend the definition
> by eXperimental types.
The enum based proposals so far cover:
JPEG (JFIF), JBIG (?), G31D, G32D, G42D
MIME has a recognised type for JPEG and both G3 variants, however the
G3 MIME type isn't very helpful for our purposes, because it relies
on MIME headers for the G3 parameters, including encoding. I don't
know yet (see previous mail) if JBIG should be in SANE V2, but if it
is, there's no MIME type for that either.
> So the question is do we define a new standard that has to be
> extended step by step in the future or do we use a subset of an
> existing standard.
I think we should extend the existing standard, by adding more frame
types. I'm open to suggestions about encoding them in some other way
rather than by using integers, but note that this will mean SANE 1.0
cannot interoperate usefully with SANE 2.0
> We also could say we use the mime type definitions where they
> make sense so frontends and other applications can take
> advantage of this and we define our own definitions
> like "sane/rgbi" where this makes sense.
If we're sticking with MIME types that should be image/vnd.sane.rgbi
This sort of mistake is why I had no confidence in the opinions Andreas
gave about MIME's utility for SANE.
I don't understand why MIME is thought to help us solve problems when
the only well-known type it shares with SANE is "JPEG", and IANA
seem less and less interested in adding well standardised MIME types,
preferring the vendor-specific name space.
Nick.
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