As you are the BDFL, principal contributor and OIIO is your baby, I reckon
that if OIIO has a good deprecation mechanism and that it bothers you, you
should make the change with the plan of adopting the new name for 3.x.

I know how one can feel about those things, naming stuff properly is still
the hardest thing in software development :)

My 2 cts!

Thomas

On Thu, 30 Dec 2021 at 2:36 PM, Larry Gritz <[email protected]> wrote:

> It's not the python bindings per se that are my concern, just the general
> confusion over terminology. C++ or Python, in either case, people might be
> liable to confuse whether ImageSpec::format refers to the pixel data type
> or the file format, and I find I have to clarify it every time I refer to
> it in the docs. Though you point out yet another ambiguity (though less
> severe) -- we also use "format" to mean formatting of strings.
>
> But both you and Anders led off by saying that it doesn't really bother
> you, so maybe I'm overestimating the size of the problem. Unless others
> chime in and say "yes, this has always caused problems, please change it",
> perhaps I should just let it go.
>
>
>
> On Dec 29, 2021, at 2:23 PM, Thomas Mansencal <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
> Hey Larry,
>
> Q1, Q2: It does not bother me as I don't really use it via the Python
> bindings.
>
> Q3: As a Pythonista, I would certainly prefer "dtype" because this is
> indeed what I use everydays. "format" is actually the method to format
> strings in python, thus it feels strange but again, not a huge deal here.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Thomas Mansencal - colour-science.org <https://www.colour-science.org/> -
> thomasmansencal.com <http://www.thomasmansencal.com/>
>
>
> On Thu, 30 Dec 2021 at 09:41, Larry Gritz <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Early on (and probably borrowing from prior software), I used
>> ImageSpec.format as the field describing the data type of the pixel values.
>>
>> I've long though that this was an unfortunate mistake, primarily because
>> it causes endless confusion about the difference between "data format" and
>> "file format", and awkward phrasing in the documentation.
>>
>> Question 1: Does anybody else care? Or is it fine?
>>
>> Question 2: If you care, would you like to see me slowly and deliberately
>> migrate to different terminology, both in the docs and what things are
>> called in code (functions, struct fields, named parameters, etc.)? Or is
>> the pain of any changes that would require client code to be edited worse
>> than the forever-tax of having chosen a confusing name?
>>
>> Question 3: If you think we should make changes, what is a more
>> appropriate name to use? NumPy (which I think is widely used by our
>> constituency) uses "dtype", so I believe that's a strong contender because
>> of its existing familiarity, relative clarity, lack of conflict with any
>> other names or concepts we use, and short name. Or "datatype"? Or something
>> else? (Suggestions welcome.)
>>
>>
>> --
>> Larry Gritz
>> [email protected]
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Oiio-dev mailing list
>> [email protected]
>> http://lists.openimageio.org/listinfo.cgi/oiio-dev-openimageio.org
>>
> _______________________________________________
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>
>
> --
> Larry Gritz
> [email protected]
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Oiio-dev mailing list
> [email protected]
> http://lists.openimageio.org/listinfo.cgi/oiio-dev-openimageio.org
>
-- 
Thomas Mansencal - colour-science.org <https://www.colour-science.org> -
thomasmansencal.com <http://www.thomasmansencal.com>
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