therion and contours

[Wookey]

+++ Martin Sluka [04-03-06 09:48 +0100]:

>> At 12:42 +0000 3.3.2004, Wookey wrote:
>> *******************************************
>>
>
>>> >OK, but I don't own _any_ machines with that _much_ ram (and I've got 5,
>>> >excluding ARM machines and PDAs)! The only one I have access to with >256
>>> >Mb of RAM is the server here and that already jammed up against it's
>>> >memory limits doing other things anyway.
>
>>
>> TCL and RGB - TCL must calculate each pixel as RGB, mostly all
>> monitors are RGB, BW monitors are exception. TCL must send RGB data
>> to video.


That's irrelevant - it's not TCL that sends the signals directly to the
monitor - that's framebuffer/video drivers/X/video hardware. When working
with B&W TCL could perfectly well use 1 byte or even 1bit image
representations. I realise that it doesn't, but it still doesn't need to
zoom all the image which is off-screen. Smart image manipulation software
works in tiles to keep memory requirements sensible.

>> Wookey, I apologize myself, I know, I do quite different things on my
>> comps (DTP, picture manipulations in Photoshop and so on.), but one
>> of the best time saving investment in my life was to buy 1 GB (or
>> more) RAM for each comp I use.
>>
>> We live in time when one may compare price of one RAM chip to price
>> of beers drinked in one night ;))) . I remember many many times more
>> expensive ones.


That's only true if the hardware you have has the capacity for lots of RAM.
My laptop can only have a max of 256 fitted, my desktop 512 the servers here
256 and 512 respectively. If you have to buy new motherboards (which means
new cases - AT->ATX) new IO cards (ISA/VLBUS->PCI) and so on, then it is not
simply the matter of the memory cost. I realise new hardware is relatively
cheap these days but in this case (displaying a scanned image at arbitrary
resolution) I don't believe the correct answer to crappy memory management
in the underlying language is 'go and buy a new computer'. When you can't
zoom a 4MB image to 200% on a 64MB computer with a virual memory system then
the software is deeply inefficient and that should be addressed, not simply
accepted. That way leads to massive software bloat.

I can zoom the very same image several thousand pecent on the same machine
using the GIMP, showing that it is perfectly feasible (which is obvious
anyway of course). I understand that Stacho has better things to do right
now than worry about TCL's crummy image-handling, but I can't accept the
'just buy a new computer' argument - we should have higher intellectual
standards than that, and more to the point I don't have the money to splash
around on new computers - I just bought one to play DVDs, so that's my
budget for the couple of years spent...

Wookey
--
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