[Insight-developers] ImageIO & GUI Support : TCON 2.0 : Topic for Tomorrow : Request for Feedback

[Luis Ibanez]

We would like to get feedback from users
regarding the following topic:

When using ITK in GUI applications, it is desirable
to have a mechanism for figuring out what file formats
are supported for reading and writing, so that they
can be offered explicitly to the user in the titles
of the Open and Save file dialogs.

For this purpose, we recently added to the ImageIO
classes the following three methods:

  * ArrayOfExtensionsType GetSupportedWriteExtensions() const
  * ArrayOfExtensionsType GetSupportedReadExtensions() const
  * void AddSupportedWriteExtension( const char * extension )
  * void AddSupportedReadExtension( const char * extension )

Unfortunately this API is not sufficient, because it doesn't
provides a textual description of the supported file formats
and a generic name for the family of file formats.

Additionally, these new API has not been fully implemented
in all the instances of the ImageIO classes.


We are therefore proposing to do one the following:

*  Proposal 1
   o Change the GetSupportedWriteExtensions()
     and GetSupportedReadExtensions() to return
     an array of pairs (extension, description)
   o Add a method to return a generic description of
     the ImageIO (e.g. NIFTI, Analyze, MetaImage)


* Proposal 2
   o Change the GetSupportedWriteExtensions()
     and GetSupportedReadExtensions() to return
     an array of triplets (extension, description,
     generic description)


We plan to discuss these two options during tomorrow's
TCon, as described in the Agenda:
http://www.itk.org/Wiki/Agenda%26Status_090508

For instructions on how to join the ITK Tcon 2.0,
please look at:
http://www.itk.org/Wiki/ITK_in_Second_Life


Please feel free to add your comments to the Wiki page
of the agenda.


    Thanks



      Luis