VisionX Programming Tools

VisionX provides a library of C functions that perform most of the common operations involved in writing image processing modules. These functions perform operations such as command line parsing, file manipulation, and memory allocation. Examples of the use of the VisionX Programming Tools are found in Appendices A and B.

VisionX data files are constructed as a sequence of elements each element is a data structure that has three attributes: a type which identifies the the class of the elements data, a size which gives the size of the elements data in bytes and the data itself.

When a VisionX file is read it is loaded into memory as a doubly linked list of elements. Similarly, the programmer, using VisionX programming tools typically creates a list of VisionX elements which are then written to a VisionX output file with a single VisionX write command.

Command Line Parsing

VisionX supports a powerful convention for passing arguments to a program through the function VXparse. An example of the use of VXparse is found in Appendix A. Further information may be found in the man page VXparse(3).

VisionX File Access Functions

New programs developed with VisionX should make use of a new set of V4 VisionX tools referred to as the File Access tools. These functions make maximum use of data encapsulation to shelter the programmer from the overhead and details of VisionX file manipulation; see the VisionX section 3 man pages (especially VXopen(3), VXread(3), and VXmakeimage(3)) for details. The use of these tools is discussed in the following sections.