[Insight-users] Typeless C++ Layer

[Seitel Mathias]

Hi all,

The ITK Roadmap 2005/2006 mentions an interesting upcoming feature of
ITK:

"A C++ typeless layer will provide users with a toolkit where the pixel
type and dimension of the image do not have to be decided in advance.
This layer will look very close to what VTK uses for representing images
and imaging filters."

We have been thinking about ways to create more adaptive, less
template-dependent interfaces to ITK in C++. Having a typeless, C++
based layer would be a major step towards that goal. It would be great
if an ITK developer could shed some light on the following points:

1. What is the status quo of this feature? Is there already any
information on how the typeless interface will look like?

2. Will the entire templated ITK code be accessible via this layer, or
just major classes?

3. Is it possible to contribute to this project?


Another interesting feature related to the above would be an interface
for accessing prominent ITK classes (such as filters and data
structures) in a unified way. Such an interface would allow the
application code to set parameters of a filter and control its
execution, without directly being aware of its class. Generally, this
could be highly beneficial for unifying application development.
Implementing this kind of interface manually for each class in question
would be tedious, but building on the existing ITK wrapping mechanisms
seems to be a workable alternative. Combining this with the proposed
typeless layer would yield even more potential applications.


Regards,
Mathias