Rough Notes on contents of a ShapeIO programmers Guide

Generic Reader description

• create a Shape
• Read Vertices
• Add vertices
• Construct Edges, if needed
• add edges
• read faces
• add faces
• read metadata

Data Model Description

• what it can model
• what it cannot model
• why a limited model was chosen

SurfaceIO package

• advantages - auto discovery of file reader
• requriements -

Simple Example: OFF shape (w/o a keyword)

• vertices
  • read vertices
  • create

General Notes to include

• ShapeIO package
  • conventions
    • sub-package names and description of what ought to go into them.
  • contents - describe existing readers and writers
  • services listings and how
  • file type discovery mechanism
• use of library version number
• describe point set coordinate convention
  • convention
  • why it was chosen
  • sample usage of iterating across points of arbitrary dimension
• define "metadata" , with a few examples of
  • metadata pertinent to the shape as a whole
  • metadata pertinent to a shape component
• explantion of why an ImageInputStream is used instead of an InputStream.
• Exmample of file metadata being added to the Shape AttributeSet
• table describing what type of IAttribute to use with various data types
• table describing the the types of IPointSet implementtations, when to use them, pros, and cons
• table describing the IEdgeSet implementations, when to use them, pros, and cons,
• have to manually add class neams to META-INF/services/... files
• if you add a color to a component remember to set setColorAttribute(ColorAttributeName)
• Values that have a 1-1 corrospondence to a shape component (Points, Edges, Faces or Solids) should be added to that component's AttributeSet. Examples are:
  • points
    • vertex colors
    • vertex normals
  • Faces
    • face colors

-- CraigSchwartz - 23 Nov 2005