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And what exactly stops a decoder from simply disregarding unnecessary format variants? If you go as far as to implement your own decoder anyway, this argument
by qayxc 4y ago
And what exactly stops a decoder from simply disregarding unnecessary format variants?
If you go as far as to implement your own decoder anyway, this argument is simply not applicable. Supporting only a subset of the format is perfectly acceptable - see TIFF, for example; not every application supports every possible feature.
- layer8 4y agoYou still need extra code to check that the format variant matches your expectations. I guess you could go very bare-bones and just assume that it’s in the right format and only check for buffer overflows, at the cost that errors will be harder to diagnose when the format is wrong. And you’d still have the overhead of the larger metadata structures of TGA. The fact is, none of the existing formats is a perfect fit for the embedded use-case here. It makes sense to introduce a new, simple and straightforward format if it addresses certain typical use-cases better than existing formats do.