Re: [Caml-list] Portable PNG exporter

[malc <av1474@comtv.ru>]

On Sat, 20 Sep 2008, Janne Hellsten wrote:

> Hi list,
>
> While working on a graphics related problem, I needed to save the
> contents of a Graphics framebuffer to a .png file.  Quick googling for
> "ocaml png" didn't bring up any results for libraries that would be
> easy to install via GODI.  I am aware of CamlImages but unfortunately
> I have never been successful at installing it due its heavy dependence
> on external libraries.  I also often work on Windows and installing
> external OCaml libraries on Windows is usually a major PITA (if
> possible at all).
>
> I decided to write a simple self-contained .png exporter that wouldn't
> depend on any external libraries (not even libpng or zlib).  I thought
> someone else might benefit from this piece of code and I thus made it
> freely available here:
>
> http://code.google.com/p/aihiot/source/browse/trunk/gfx/save_bitmap/ocaml/png.ml

Few things that hurt the eye:

Int32.of_string "[number]" is unnecessary, OCaml(not sure which version
this was introduced in though) can read various specific size ints
natively:

# 0n, 0l, 0L;;
- : nativeint * int32 * int64 = (0n, 0l, 0L)

Secondly `Printf.fprintf chnl "string"' looks rather expensive compared
to `output_string chnl "string"'.

-- 
mailto:av1474@comtv.ru