My only issue against format is that the word is a bit overloaded. In my
experience with Python and Rust, format generally means string formatting.
I personally vote to make the word more explicit, like datatype, but I
haven't had issues with it in the past.

On Wed, Dec 29, 2021, 6:05 PM Thomas Mansencal <[email protected]>
wrote:

> 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
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Oiio-dev mailing list
>> [email protected]
>> http://lists.openimageio.org/listinfo.cgi/oiio-dev-openimageio.org
>>
>>
>> --
>> 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>
> _______________________________________________
> Oiio-dev mailing list
> [email protected]
> http://lists.openimageio.org/listinfo.cgi/oiio-dev-openimageio.org
>
_______________________________________________
Oiio-dev mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.openimageio.org/listinfo.cgi/oiio-dev-openimageio.org

Reply via email to