[whatwg] Canvas ImageData comments

[Ian Hickson]

On Sat, 16 Jun 2007, Philip Taylor wrote:
> 
> Colour spaces are not dealt with at all, but are particularly relevant 
> for getImageData (else you have no idea what the values mean).

Fixed, in theory. But since I have no idea what I'm talking about here, 
you'll have to check closely to make sure I didn't babble incoherently.


> maybe it's safest to just say that all colours throughout the canvas API 
> must be handled consistently in the same colour space (without saying 
> exactly which it is).

Wouldn't that mean that different browsers could have different effects 
when rendering external images -- with gamma -- to the canvas?


> "The putImageData(image, dx, dy) method must take the given ImageData 
> structure, and draw it at the specified location dx,dy in the canvas 
> coordinate space, mapping each pixel represented by the ImageData 
> structure into one device pixel." - how should it 'draw it'? Given the 
> requirement on putImageData(getImageData(...)), it has to be replacing 
> the pixels in that area rather than doing anything like normal drawing, 
> but that isn't explicit.

Is it better now?


> "an integer array" - what is that? Does { 0:0, 1:0, 2:0, 3:0, length:4 } 
> count, since it looks quite like an array? Why can't I use a non-integer 
> array like [ 255*(0.5 + 0.5*Math.sin(x/100)) for (x in [0, 1, 2, 3, ... 
> ]) ] and have putImageData round to integers, and clamp to the range [0, 
> 255], since that would be closer to what I wanted than an exception 
> would be?

Fixed.


> Given the quite disgusting code like "[i for (i in function (n) { for 
> (let i = 0; i < n; i += 1) yield 0 }(w*h*4)) ]" to generate an array of 
> zeros, maybe it would be nice to accepted 'undefined' element values and 
> treat them as zero, so that people don't have to bother filling in parts 
> of the array they don't care about.

Ok.


> (For Firefox 2 / Minefield, it throws NS_ERROR_DOM_SYNTAX_ERR if .data 
> is not an actual JS array, or if .data.length < w*h*4. For each of the 
> first w*h*4 elements, if it is not a number then it throws 
> NS_ERROR_DOM_SYNTAX_ERR. Otherwise it gets rounded towards zero: if the 
> result is an integer in the range [-2^30, 2^30), or if you're running on 
> Windows instead of Linux (?!), then it gets wrapped to the range [0, 
> 256), else it gets treated as 0. Elements after the first w*h*4 are 
> completely ignored. See 
> <http://canvex.lazyilluminati.com/misc/imagedata.html>, but not in 
> FF2-on-Linux because that's totally broken.)

The spec doesn't quite require that now, but it should be better defined 
than it was, at least.


> In the example code:
> "var could" - should be "var cloud".
> "function FillPlasma(data) { ... }" - should be "function
> FillPlasma(data, color) { ... }".
> "function FillCload(data, x, y) { ... }" - should be "function
> FillCloud(data, x, y) { ... }".
> 
> The example creates two ImageDatas of the same size, the putImageDatas 
> one on top of the other at the same position. That seems pointless, 
> since the second will completely overwrite the first.

Fixed.


> "The current transformation matrix must not affect the getImageData() 
> and putImageData() methods." - nor must the composite operation, global 
> alpha, shadow, clip region ( ? In FF it does get clipped), ...

Fixed.


> "the rectangle which has one corner at the (sx, sy) coordinate" - 
> s/one/its top left/

Fixed.


> "Each component of each device pixel represented in this array must be 
> in the range 0..255" vs "The ImageData object's data array only contains 
> entries that are in the range 0 to 255 inclusive" - inconsistent way of 
> referring to ranges.

One of these seems to have gone.


> "the specified location dx,dy in the canvas coordinate space" - should 
> be "(dx, dy)" for consistent notation.

Fixed.


> "ImageData objects must be initialised so that their height attribute is 
> set to h, [...] their width attribute is set to w, [...] and the data 
> attribute is initialised to an array of h×w×4 integers." - height/h are 
> written before width/w here, whereas everywhere else in the document has 
> widths before heights.

Fixed.


> "The width and height (w and h) might be different than the sw and sh 
> arguments to the function" - 'different than' sounds a bit odd to me 
> here; maybe I'd prefer 'different from'.

Fixed.


> "putImageData(image, dx, dy)" - maybe s/image/imagedata/, because it's 
> not at all the same as the 'image' parameter in drawImage.

Fixed.


> "If getContext() is called with that exact string for tis contextId 
> argument ..." - s/tis/its/

Fixed.


> "while one could create an ImageData object, one would net necessarily 
> know what resolution the canvas expected" - s/net/not/

Fixed.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'