[XviD-devel] [RFC] A solution to avoid API incompatibilities.

xvid-devel@xvid.org xvid-devel@xvid.org
Tue, 15 Oct 2002 17:56:17 -0700


On Tue, Oct 15, 2002 at 06:45:16PM +0200, Edouard Gomez wrote:
> Nice plan but we could implement ascii argument passing before the uci
> standard  is finnished. That's  the force  of this  approach, backward
> compatibility is a no cost work.

Actually, please note that UCI doesn't currently use a scheme quite like what
you proposed..  In UCI, the parameter values are not all passed as strings
(there's several common native types which can be chosen based on the needs of
the parameter).

I would reccomend holding off on changing XviD's current interface in this
direction as the UCI specs are currently still a bit in flux, so you may end up
going a direction which later turns out to be different from what UCI ends up
actually using..

In particular, I've been considering changing the UCI specs for parameter
passing to make things somewhat easier for codec developers anyway.  The idea
I've been toying with is enabling codecs to tell UCI how to "map" their
parameters onto existing binary structures, so the only thing needed to convert
an existing interface to UCI would be to define a structure which tells where
all the parameters go.

I'm still considering the potential ramifications of this approach, though
(particularly cross-platform).  (if people have thoughts, please feel free to
contribute to the UCI-Devel list)

-alex

PS: UCI web site/maillists/etc can be found at http://uci.sourceforge.net/