[PD-dev] [GEM] names

[chris clepper]

Hi

I mentioned in the last post about a new GEM release that some of the 
names of various objects don't really match what they do very well. 
i think i've said on a few occasions that the name of the object 
needs to tell the user what they do rather than be some excessively 
cute, clever name from a book no one has read, Hindu deities  or 
someone's cat (btw, all of these are used as names in other video 
systems).  so here's a list of objects and suggested changes:

- pix_blur - this should be renamed pix_motionblur and pix_blur will 
be an abstraction for a convolution based blur.

- pix_buf - would it be better to rename this pix_separator to mirror 
the separator object?  pix_buf can remain for compatibility.

- pix_depot - why not call it pix_buffer?  or pix_table or pix_array? 
something that is a common term for a chunk of memory filled with 
data (frames of video in this case).  yes, a depot is a place to 
store things but it's mainly used as a military term or in the name 
of a large chain of hardware and office supply stores in the US (Home 
Depot and Office Depot respectively).

- pix_put/get - could be pix_buffer_write and pix_buffer_read.  these 
seem a little more specific to me and the name-space extension allows 
for direct association of functions with the pix_buffer object.

also i was thinking of making objects that performed various actions 
on the buffer or used it in some way for processing.  also, this 
could facilitate non-realtime renders. examples:

pix_buffer_average - averages the frames in the buffer and stores the 
result as a single frame.  useful for motion detection and 
compositing and pix_background type effects

pix_buffer_record - dumps the contents of the buffer into a Quicktime 
.mov and compresses them.  could be useful in situations where the 
frames can be stored in the buffer but compression takes too much 
time to be done in real-time (like MPEG-2 or 4).

pix_buffer_motionblur - really high quality motion blurring requires 
lots of frames to be used and is generally not a real-time operation. 
if you've ever seen the shake motion blur you know about this.

there are some other ones that are new to CVS that might need better names:

- pix_background - this removes the background from based on a static 
image snapshot.  is there a more meaningful name that better 
describes this?  pix_background_remove is a bit excessive i think.

- pix_scanline - this does image decimation based on either repeating 
or removing rows of pixels, so it does do scanline processing but is 
that really clear?

i don't think any of the objects are really in wide-spread use except 
for pix_buf which can remain for compatibility purposes.  maybe this 
is just a personal pet-peeve, and no one really cares what the 
objects are called as long as they work, but i thought i would make 
some suggestions and see what people think.

cgc