[whatwg] Canvas pixel manipulation and performance

[Kenneth Russell]

On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 9:30 AM, Jason Oster <parasyte at kodewerx.org> wrote:
> I guess this suggestion to access the full pixel data in a single array
> element has fallen by the wayside.  Are there any direct objections to
> including additional API to allow this kind of behavior?  It seems most
> developers believe it would be unnecessary, but I haven't heard much in the
> way of reasoning (technical nor personal).
>
> I cannot comment on the "typical uses" of accessing pixel data from script;
> if it is [in general] more important to have each of the R,G,B,A components
> separated for script access, or not.  But for cases involving indexed
> palettes, having the ability to directly treat each pixel as a single
> property is very much desired.
>
> It is not going to provide a huge boost in performance.  At worst, it will
> help make code cleaner.  But at best, it will do that and [slightly?] reduce
> the performance penalty of reading/writing 3 superfluous (in my eyes) array
> accesses.  The only negative aspect I can think of with additional API
> functions is the introduction of new developer confusion; "Which one do I
> use?"

I think you'd get more traction if you had performance measurements;
minimally, profiles showing that this is hot in your current
application. Ideally, you could do a prototype in one of the browsers
supporting WebGL which exposes the ImageData's backing store as a
WebGLUnsignedIntArray. If this showed a significant speedup it would
provide strong motivation.

-Ken