Panorama project

[Pablo d'Angelo]

On Fri, 02 May 2003, Juha Helminen wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I do not have nothing special new, I read hugin files and tried (once
> more) think what could be portable way to do things. These included
> files are those that I can compile without fatal errors (code is not
> usable/used). If everything non-OS depending is left over then there is
> not much working code.

I'll look at you changes later on. the main things that are probably
not portable are the image reading stuff (I'd like to put the actual
image readtin stuff out of the model classes, but something for
reading the exif info belongs into the model, I think.).

I used imagemagick because of the following: it can read more excotic
image (16 bit tiff or so) formats (actually I haven't check if
wxwindows can do that), and when I want to analyse the image (ctrl
point fine tune or searching), I need access to the pixels anyway, and
image magick comes with support for different functions of that.  So
this could also be made GUI independant. does imagemagick run on the
mac as well?

the process interface is also different for windows. actually the
windows versions of PTOptimizer open a window, and the linux version
just prints some stuff to the terminal, so that needs to be
encasulated somewere as well. Probably the runOptimizer() and
runStitcher() commands should be encapsulated in their own class, that
just uses the panorama model to do the nessecary stuff. some day we
might even include the PT optimizer in our code. (Well with the
current activity agains PTGui, I'd like to keep that sort of code out
of our project right now.)

Another issue is whether we should add some contraints into the model.

For example, if I want to optimize b, but all images were taken using
the same lens, it could also toggle the optimization settings for all
other pictures. This is what I would expect in the "beginner" mode.
The advanced mode should not do this, i think.

So the question is if the model should be configurable with different
contraints/behaviours for different user groups, or if this is left to
the UI part. I believe it fits better into the model part.

> www.ptgui.com is closed temporally. This makes me thinking what is the
> future of open source panorama software -- easier than commercial one
> when I think patents. Luckily plain software patents are not valid in EU
> but is there some reason to count on them also.

well, I think Joost (PTGui author) is from the netherlands, that is
inside the EU. And the webserver seems to be there too (hosting
company: WideXS NCC located in Hoofddorp, netherlands):

traceroute to www.ptgui.com (213.206.65.75), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets

 8  Frankfurt1.BelWue.DE (129.143.1.26)  179 ms  238 ms  64 ms
 9  ffm-b2-geth0-1.telia.net (213.248.79.41)  220 ms  295 ms  255 ms
10  ffm-b2-geth0-1.telia.net (213.248.68.33)  39 ms  171 ms  269 ms
11  ffm-bb2-pos2-3-0.telia.net (213.248.64.177)  181 ms  260 ms  246 ms
12  prs-bb2-pos0-2-0.telia.net (213.248.64.197)  214 ms  201 ms  262 ms
13  prs-b1-pos1-0.telia.net (213.248.70.10)  186 ms  131 ms  196 ms
14  bcr1-so-6-1-0.Paris.cw.net (208.172.251.181)  208 ms  245 ms  164 ms
15  bcr2.Amsterdam.cw.net (208.173.210.62)  164 ms  328 ms  198 ms
16  cable-and-wireless-internal-isp.Amsterdam.cw.net (208.173.209.182)  164 ms  245 ms  345 ms
17  213.206.65.75 (213.206.65.75)  174 ms  137 ms  225 ms


I'm worried by the whole situation. Its interesting that PTAssembler
is still avaiable. But thats based in the US, where Oxal has some
patents.

I can only guess that ipix is trying to go after PTGui, after they
have lost importance in the US.

Whatever it is, it would be nice for us developers to know whats
behind the closing of the ptgui website. must be some legal trouble,
otherwise the ptgui author would have said something.

I definately do not want to get any trouble of that sort. Its just a
small opensource project for me, I do not want to have a small DeCSS
case on me.

ciao
  Pablo
--
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