[Insight-developers] XML, Dynamic Compilation and Templated code

[Yarden Livnat]

Good morning,

This is a rather long email and is geared toward those who are part
of the decision making or developer whose working on extending
ITK. As such I will break it into several emails.

A short introduction:
     We, at the SCI Institute, are working on integrating ITK into our
     Problem Solving Environment, also known as SCIRun. This effort
     is part of the NLM effort to disseminate ITK.

We are facing several issues with regard to ITK design. Some of them
can be hacked around but some are more fundamental and require
input and discussion with the rest of you. Please note that these are 
more
than just SCIRun issues and I feel strongly that they can benefit ITK 
outside
the SCIRun issues.

The short story is:
       1. XML description of ITK filters.
       2. Dynamic Compilation.
       3. Non-templated base classes for templated classes.


1.XML -  We would like to propose our ideas and implementations of the 
XML description.
2. Dynamic Compilation - We would like to have DC in ITK and have a 
solution (which is
                                                implemented in SCIRun 
already). I'll talk about the Why, How
                                                and What kind of 
requirements it poses on ITK.
3. Non-templated base classes - This partially part of the Dynamic 
Compilation and partially
                                               a result of the fact that 
we are using a run-time rather then
                                               compile-time construction 
of ITK filters.


ok, that's it for the introduction. I'll send several email with regard 
to each of this point (so that
you can skip those that are of no interest to you).

	Yarden Livnat
	Research Assistant Professor
          SCI Institute
          University of Utah