[vtk-developers] equivalent to vtkImageReader2 for polydata

[Berk Geveci]

> In response to Berk, my justification for calling this reader
> vtkPolyDataReader2 was based on a notion of backward compatibility,
> given that this reader is exactly analogous to vtkImageReader2.

Backwards compatibility is not the right term. You mean consistency.
Being consistent with a bad precedent is not necessarily the right thing.

> I'm open to calling it vtkFlexiblePolyDataReader or something in that
> spirit, but some thought should be given to renaming vtkImageReader2

vtkFlexiblePolyDataReader is slightly better but still quite bad. We have
been using "Abstract" or "Base" to represent abstract superclasses. So
it needs to be vtkAbstractPolyDataReader or vtkPolyDataReaderBase.

Renaming vtkImageReader2 has the problem of breaking backwards
compatibility. I would love to see it renamed but I am not sure if it is
worth breaking all of the external code that uses it.

> in a comparable manner, otherwise the naming convention becomes even
> more confusing. Moreover, it's been suggested that I also implement
> such a reader for vtkUnstructuredGrid, so one option would be to call
> all of these vtkXXXReader2 for now, and vtkFlexibleReader at the next
> release.

I did not suggest implementing a base for unstructured grid readers. I
suggested implementing a base of all readers, something like
vtkAbstractDataReader.
ALL VTK readers would be a descendant of this class.

-berk