-----Original Message-----
From: Brett Henderson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
You're right, encoders and decoders are special types of filters. But why
create a distinction between the two when there is no reason to. If
encoders require different methods to decoders then by all means create
separate interfaces, but they are doing the same thing (transforming data)
so surely we can use the same interfaces for both purposes.
What do others think about this? It sounds sensible but I can't seem
to shake the sense of comfort in making the distinction between the two.
For the stateless operation there we may not have symmetry between the
decode and encode halves.
To my mind encoding and decoding are not distinct operations: they both simply transform information from one format to another. It seems "in the eye of the beholder" which format is "encoded" and which is "decoded". On the other hand, the case of lossy transformations may lend some weight to naming the format that contains less/degraded information the "encoded" format.
Off the top of my head, I could imagine two video streaming applications that broadcast media in different formats. I imagine that each application will allow many formats for source media and "encode" to each chosen streaming format. If application A streams divx and application B streams ogg theora, the applications would disagree on which format to label "encoded".
I'm leaning towards a single set of interfaces for data transformation. I am also beginning to suspect that codec and convert may be converging. Poking around the sandbox, I think compress might want to be assimilated as well.
-- Ryan Hoegg ISIS Networks http://www.isisnetworks.net/
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