ILDA Format

[keeperx]

That should cover the color part of the ILDA standard. Now lets move onto the next topic:
"Why the IDLA format is a really poor way of storing vector art"

Because when you store vector art using the ILDA standard, you end up wasting your life reading threads like this.

[James Lehman]

ILDA is what it is. It is what we have. It has served us all well for many years. It has a large base of previous use.

I agree. There IS a better way to store laser vector art.

It's called WAVE!

But not just any wave will do. It has to have the LaserBoy extensions added to the header.

I have documented some of this and dralva has already written his own code that writes to this spec. (And it works too!)

James.

[keeperx]

Lets talk about the "laserboy wave" the effect of this will be 2 fold.. it will #1 distract you (James) from the actual topic of the thread, and #2, likely make Bill (pangolin) loose interest in the thread thereby resolving any issues there may be between your understandings of the topic and each other. ...


now per our discussion about the wave format and the headers it needs to include, what headers does it CURRENTLY support, and does laserboy support skipping info it cant read

would you like to also discuss the project file format we discussed using xml for data storage?

[James Lehman]

Oh my!

I don't want to distract anyone from the subject of this thread!

I REALLY want Bill to get more into it. I'd like to hear from Patrick and other ILDA members as well.

I will start a thread about LaserBoy WAVE elsewhere.

James.

[Zoof]

ILDA is what it is. It is what we have. It has served us all well for many years. It has a large base of previous use.

I agree. There IS a better way to store laser vector art.

It's called WAVE!

But not just any wave will do. It has to have the LaserBoy extensions added to the header.

I have documented some of this and dralva has already written his own code that writes to this spec. (And it works too!)

James.

WAVE is probably worse from my point of view. ILDA and wave formats are on the hardware level. They basically prescribe the signal that has to be sent to the scanners to get a picture. Art on the other hand is on a higher level that is hardware independent. So should the file definition be.

[James Lehman]

WAVE is probably worse from my point of view. ILDA and wave formats are on the hardware level. They basically prescribe the signal that has to be sent to the scanners to get a picture. Art on the other hand is on a higher level that is hardware independent. So should the file definition be.

You are absolutely correct, my friend!

carmengary got it right when he suggested that we develop an XML standard.

It's kinda' like wave is the machine code direction and XML is the C++ direction.

ILDA is what we have as a given starting point.

BUT.... Wave is not as bad as you might think. It is a very versatile binary file format!

James.

PS. I keep waiting for the phone to ring. Hmmmmm.

[keeperx]

hell you could even encode the wave as base64 and store everything in 1 file.. yes it can be done...

[Zoof]

You are absolutely correct, my friend!

carmengary got it right when he suggested that we develop an XML standard.

Just what we need: another file format!!

[keeperx]

Just what we need: another file format!!

cant tell if you mean that or are being sarcastic.. but i think another file format is awesome... especially if it is differently featured.. choice is a great thing

[Zoof]

cant tell if you mean that or are being sarcastic.. but i think another file format is awesome... especially if it is differently featured.. choice is a great thing

Sarcasm indeed - just my point of view. Choice is good but support for a file format is even better. My previous remark, opening the topic of graphics representation was also a bit sarcastic - just my mood lately.
What I meant to say is that there was sooo much fuss about the color information while the the other part didn't get attention.
If you want to share art, share the artistic content not the hardware specific content.