[IGSTK-Developers] Questions

[Ziv Yaniv]

Hi all,

A couple of comments/questions about IGSTK (I decided to annoy everyone, 
not just Patrick):


0. Why are there only four com ports (enums) defined in the 
SerialCommunication class?

1. Why are enums used in the communication classes (SerialCommunication 
- baud rate etc., SocketCommunication - SocketUsageType) and not Tokens 
that guarantee both type safety and valid values?

2. Why is the tool calibration data read as floats (if I remember 
correctly VTK transitioned to double). More importantly, why is the 
calibration data read from an XML file as ASCII data and not binary? 
ASCII will not reflect the original value in the variables. Running the 
"same" program twice , calibration and continue vs. read calibration and 
continue, will give different results.

After taking a look at the itk classes for reading/writing transform 
files (itk::TransformFileWriter/itk::TransformFileReader) I saw they 
have the same problem, data is written in ASCII.

3. Any plans to encode binary data in XML files (like in the "good" old 
days when binary data was sent via email after uuencoding it) or is 
object serialization in the cards?

4. Why does the igstk::XMLToolCalibrationReader::CanReadFile() method 
actually read the file? The side effect of loading the file is then used 
in the ToolCalibrationReader<TCalibration>::ParseXML() method.

            thanks
                 Ziv


-- 
Ziv Yaniv, PhD., Research Assistant Professor
Imaging Science and Information Systems (ISIS) Center
Department of Radiology
Georgetown University Medical Center
2115 Wisconsin Avenue, Suite 603
Washington, DC, 20007,

Phone: +1-202-687-2902
Fax: +1-202-784-3479
email: zivy at isis.imac.georgetown.edu
web: http://isiswiki.georgetown.edu/zivy/