Re: [hackers] [PATCH] [sent] Quick patch to replace png with farbfeld

From: Dimitris Papastamos <sin_AT_2f30.org>
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2015 16:35:39 +0000

On Tue, Nov 17, 2015 at 05:17:41PM +0100, ACE wrote:
> > Very quick and dirty patch. This is intended to generate a discussion
> > on the applicability of farbfeld in sent. I can polish the patch
> > later depending on the outcome of the discussion.
>
> Personally I don't see the advantage of using farbfeld over png. To me
> this introduces a obstacle when using sent. I currently own no tools that
> support farbfeld and I doubt any of my tools will support it. I suspect
> that farbfeld will not gain a widespread use/support.
>
> Your images will most likely exist in other formats; you have
> essentially introduced another step when using images in sent. Therefore
> I would no longer consider sent being a 'easy' tool to use as I would
> likely first have to find a tool to convert my images into *.ff.
>
> It seems like this patch only handles uncompressed farbfeld images, I
> imagine that the size of a presentation would quickly become
> unnecessarily large. Sure you could add other tools to handle
> compression, which will result in added complexity/dependencies in the
> project.
>
> I see nothing but downsides to using farbfeld exclusively.

Farbfeld is an intermediate format that is easy to parse and emit.
Sent can use pipe + fork + exec. This is similar to how tar handles
compressed archives.

You will need the farbfeld tools somewhere in your PATH. The tools
currently handle conversion between png and ff but there is nothing
stopping you from also supporting jpg. This means that sent will also
automatically work with jpgs as well.
Received on Tue Nov 17 2015 - 17:35:39 CET