[Mono-list] Best way to implement image loaders?

J. Perkins jason@379.com
Wed, 19 Feb 2003 15:28:35 -0500


I am looking into adding support for PNG files to the
System.Drawing.Bitmap class. There are two ways I can
go about it, and I thought I'd see what the current
conventions are.

Option one would be to port libpng and zlib to C#,
adding them to the System.Drawing assembly. This has
the advantage of not requiring any external dependencies,
and it should run anywhere. The downside is it increases
the size and maintenance requirements of Mono.

Option two is to bind to an external shared library.
This would keep the assembly smaller and easier to
manage, but raises all kinds of issues re: missing
or outdated libraries.

Although it is more work, I guess I am leaning toward
the first solution. Any thoughts?

Jason
379