[PD-dev] [GEM] names

[Josh Steiner]

i agree strongly, consistant and logical naming is a great boon to 
usability.  this matters to me right now becuase i've just this week 
started really digging into GEM (from CVS) for the first time and i've 
been doing some serious hed screatcing over a lot of the very names you 
mention.  further, "fixing" this kind of stuff really needs to be done 
before the objects are in wide spread usage, like now :)

-josh

chris clepper wrote:

> 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
>
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