Hi Alexander, Alexander Kiel wrote: > Hi Vincent, > >> I see. I had in mind to use OpenTypeDataInputStream as the common >> interface. It actually makes sense to use ImageInputStream instead. >> Simpler and just as flexible. That will add a direct dependency on >> a class in the javax.imageio package, but this is not a problem as it is >> part of the standard library. That ImageInputStream interface is >> unfortunately named really. > > What did you mean with your last sentence? That ImageInputStream isn't > named good?
Yes. AFAICT its methods have nothing to do with images. This interface should probably have been given a more neutral name. <snip/> >>>>>> - does the use of serializable objects make sense? What would be more >>>>>> efficient: re-parsing font data all the time or re-loading >>>>>> serializable object representation of them? >>>>> You mean the font metrics XML files? I've alwas asking me for what >>>>> propose they are there. No, I don't think, we need this. I really don't >>>>> want to serialize the Advanced OpenType Features! It took me already a >>>>> good amount of code to parse just a bit of it. >>>> What I meant was to use the java.io.Serializable interface. I don’t >>>> indeed think XML representations are any useful, apart maybe for >>>> debugging purpose or to have a more human-readable version of the font >>>> file. >>>> IIC there would be next to nothing to do to cache Serializable objects >>>> on the hard drive and retrieve them? >>> Hmmm. Ok. But if we want to use Serializable for that, your classes have >>> to be very stable. Versioning the Serializable stuff is a real burden in >>> my opinion. So we will need a cache which detects version changes and >>> invalidate the objects if so. Do you know such a lib? >> I was thinking that just catching the InvalidClassException when reading >> the object would be enough to conclude that the cache is no longer valid >> and must be re-created. Maybe I’m wrong? I must confess that I have no >> experience with serialization. > > Yes this could work. But I find it always difficult and time consuming > to design classes for serialization. And reading the serialized version > is most likely not much faster than reading the actual OpenType file. So > I would really want to wait until we have a real performance problem. Sure. Nothing wrong with that. Thanks, Vincent
