Re: Reading images from internal char string

[PhilipNienhuis]

Pantxo wrote
> 
> PhilipNienhuis wrote
>> Hi,
>> 
>> AFAIK (pls correct me if I'm wrong) Octave can only read images from file
>> (or URL, essentially a file as well).
>> I'd like to find a way to read images directly from a char string ("text
>> file"). 
>> 
>> For some assignment I need to process a long series of rain radar images
>> in PNG format. 
>> I haul them in using urlread() in "raw" (compressed) form, IOW the very
>> same format in memory as it would be on disk.  To make an image out of
>> them I haven't found a better way yet than to first write them in raw
>> form to to disk (fopen, fwrite, fclose), only then to be able turn them
>> into an image using imread() to read them back in as an image.  
>> It would be a lot faster, and save disk space, if the output from
>> urlread() could directly be interpreted and turned into an image while
>> the "raw" image is still in memory, skipping disk I/O altogether.
>> 
>> Is this possible at all?
>> 
>> Stepping through imread.m I see that control finally passes to binary
>> module __magickread__. All the way through there I only see references to
>> real files.
>> I saw the url option in imageIO.m but that also results in a file on disk
>> that is fed to __magickread__ in the end.
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> 
>> Philip
> Hi Phillip,
> 
> AFAIU Octave never has to deal with raw image headers/data, we rely on
> graphics magick to obtain image data in the form of RGB or indexed matrix.
> 
> To do the job, you'd have to either implement a png reader your self or
> use libpng from an oct file.

Ahhh... libpng, good suggestion. Hopefully that doesn't invoke file I/O
either.

I was already setting up some .oct fle using libz (in my case the pixel data
are deflated). The data chunks in a png "text" file are easily located and
in the past I have hit other uses for in-memory uncompressing so maybe this
will give the final nudge :-)

That GraphicsMagick always reads images from file is a bit misleading; deep
down it cannot be an atomic procedure.  Either way it has to import file
contents into memory, so  some raw read routine -possibly deeply buried-
transports data into memory and some other (possibly equally deeply buried)
routines process the data.
First writing to file then reading it back unaltered before processing the
contents is just a plain waste of resources incl. time. In my opinion :-)

Thanks to all who responded.

Philip




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