# Re: xsane-0.31 available

Ewald R. de Wit (ewald@pobox.com)
Mon, 2 Aug 1999 18:37:07 +0200

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Oliver Rauch (oliver.rauch@Wolfsburg.DE) wrote:
> that is the reason why I renamed it!
> The frontend does not need to know how the alpha channel
> is generated, so it is better to name it alpha than infrared.

I feel it's a bit stupid and confusing to call it the alpha channel.
Alpha channel has a very well defined and established meaning in the
graphics world. Just because you can dump the infrared data into the
4th channel of a file doesn't make this data 'alpha' in any way. If
you look at the SANE standard, it defines the red channel as 'data
from the red spectral band', etc. , so why would the infrared channel
be treated differently.

Should scanners in the future support a different sort of 4th channel,
lets say height, then it should get it's own SANE_FRAME name (eg RGBH
or something).

The SANE_FRAME name tells the frontend what sort of data it is that it
receives. Perhaps your frontend isn't interested in this but other
frontends might.

    --
      --  Ewald

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