Diary of a CrazyFrench

I have created libopenraw on Freedestkop.org with the help of Freedesktop.org volunteer.

So I started filling the wiki and committing code to CVS.

There is a real need for a library to provide decoding and processing, in the Free Software world. Ideally, it would just use the documentation provided by the manufacturers, but since they don't want, reverse engineering will come to the rescue. Still time to Act Now, but lest prepare plan B that can switch back to plan A.

Here is what I see is needed:

• dcraw functionnality for image processing
• meta data and MakerNote extraction from the RAW files
• output all the meta data in a portable way like XMP
• output either decoded or RAW data
• all of this in a usable C API (bindable to other language)

How can we achieve that:

• rip off dcraw code as its license allow
• use libexif (that needs to be fixed) to decode meta data and MakerNote, or any other apropriate library like the Perl ExifTool
• implement DNG encoding and decoding
• implement the missing bits like XMP

We have seen nice things in that area, and I just find that there is not enough focusing. For example Udi Fuchs, UFRaw author, wants to decode the meta data from RAW files using libexif, it is a good oportunity to put that in a library. No doubt, that will be code to reuse. UFRaw already includes the code from dcraw, why not make it a library, since Dave Coffin, from the mail exchange we have had, is not interested in at all. Apparently Udi does not want to reinvent the wheel. All of this would be a good starting point.

At GUADEC, we also had a demo of an ongoing work by Raphael Quinet, towards adding meta data support into the Gimp. If only we could share the effort....