"Andy Little" <andy@servocomm.freeserve.co.uk> writes:
A graph OTOH is a mathematical abstraction far removed from any phemomenon it is trying to represent.
I could argue that point effectively, but I don't need to.
A pointer is similarly an abstraction far removed from the electronic phemonena
Really? I thought memory addressing goes down to a pretty fundamental level in most computers. Well, nevermind that...
Both Graphs and pointers are also widely computing entities with very widespread general purpose use.
Yes. Images aren't widely used for many different purposes?
Neither Graphs or pointers need a viewer for a user to make sense of them
Against both of those assertions there are good arguments. For pointers consider the popularity of http://www.gnu.org/software/ddd/. For graphs... well, have you ever tried to understand a graph that's given some non-graphical presentation? It's possible for small graphs, but http://www.tomsawyer.com/home/index.php has a market with good reason.
Imaging OTOH is a specialised area. Fact is you need a Viewer of some kind to work with them in any meaningful way.
And there are hundreds of image viewers available, many of them free. There's no reason Boost has to provide one. And a viewer is a far cry from being a UI for the library. The library does image _manipulation_.
I am being slightly cheeky and trying to probe as to whether the Adobe guys would also be willing to share some of their cross platform viewing technology with boost as a companion to or part of their GIL proposal.
So OTOH you were not making a serious objection to the library proposal?
Imagine how impressive the GIL examples would be if the library came with a viewer.
I don't see how it would make the examples any more impressive. The library docs would surely have lots of pictures.
Heck you could even use it for BGL and little memory boxes representing pointers if you felt the need.
Now I'm totally lost. -- Dave Abrahams Boost Consulting www.boost-consulting.com