[vtk-developers] Pay attention, grab a beer: VTK 5.0

[John Biddiscombe]

>  12. vtkMesh class

My initial reaction was extreme horror because I assumed this would mean
the death of vtkPolyData. On further reading of subsequent posts I see
that vtkPolyData will remain as before, however a mention of
implementing vtkPolyData as a subclass of vtkMesh is very interesting. 

There does seem to be a possibility of implementing
verts/lines/polys/strips iterators within a vtkMesh class. This would
involve a great deal of work reimplementing polydata oriented filters,
but should polydata ever become extinct it does provide a possible route
for changes. A vtkPolyData class of vtkMesh would need additional arrays
to represent locations of specific cell types and iterators would
traverse these. All references to cellIds would be swapped for
iterators/references but otherwise filters ought to operate as before.

Is this the kind of thing being considered?

JB
PS. All the other changes are fine though I would like to stress that
backward compatibility should not impede progress. Despite the large
amount of work it might cause me.

PPS. Changes to pipeline execution model need to be publicised. Many of
us have implemented filters and even whole programs that rely on very
specific aspects of the execution process.