The Gordian knot that 7fec5074f9 attempted
to unravel was caused by the fact that there are several
data-precision-dependent (JSAMPLE-dependent) fields and methods in the
exposed libjpeg API structures, and if you change the exposed libjpeg
API structures, then you have to change the whole API. If you change
the whole API, then you have to provide a whole new library to support
the new API, and that makes it difficult to support multiple data
precisions in the same application. (It is not impossible, as example.c
demonstrated, but using data-precision-dependent libjpeg API structures
would have made the cjpeg, djpeg, and jpegtran source code hard to read,
so it made more sense to build, install, and package 12-bit-specific
versions of those applications.)
Unfortunately, the result of that initial integration effort was an
unreadable and unmaintainable mess, which is a problem for a library
that is an ISO/ITU-T reference implementation. Also, as I dug into the
problem of lossless JPEG support, I realized that 16-bit lossless JPEG
images are a thing, and supporting yet another version of the libjpeg
API just for those images is untenable.
In fact, however, the touch points for JSAMPLE in the exposed libjpeg
API structures are minimal:
- The colormap and sample_range_limit fields in jpeg_decompress_struct
- The alloc_sarray() and access_virt_sarray() methods in
jpeg_memory_mgr
- jpeg_write_scanlines() and jpeg_write_raw_data()
- jpeg_read_scanlines() and jpeg_read_raw_data()
- jpeg_skip_scanlines() and jpeg_crop_scanline()
(This is subtle, but both of those functions use JSAMPLE-dependent
opaque structures behind the scenes.)
It is much more readable and maintainable to provide 12-bit-specific
versions of those six top-level API functions and to document that the
aforementioned methods and fields must be type-cast when using 12-bit
samples. Since that eliminates the need to provide a 12-bit-specific
version of the exposed libjpeg API structures, we can:
- Compile only the precision-dependent libjpeg modules (the
coefficient buffer controllers, the colorspace converters, the
DCT/IDCT managers, the main buffer controllers, the preprocessing
and postprocessing controller, the downsampler and upsamplers, the
quantizers, the integer DCT methods, and the IDCT methods) for
multiple data precisions.
- Introduce 12-bit-specific methods into the various internal
structures defined in jpegint.h.
- Create precision-independent data type, macro, method, field, and
function names that are prefixed by an underscore, and use an
internal header to convert those into precision-dependent data
type, macro, method, field, and function names, based on the value
of BITS_IN_JSAMPLE, when compiling the precision-dependent libjpeg
modules.
- Expose precision-dependent jinit*() functions for each of the
precision-dependent libjpeg modules.
- Abstract the precision-dependent libjpeg modules by calling the
appropriate precision-dependent jinit*() function, based on the
value of cinfo->data_precision, from top-level libjpeg API
functions.
libjpeg-turbo is a JPEG image codec that uses SIMD instructions to accelerate baseline JPEG compression and decompression on x86, x86-64, Arm, PowerPC, and MIPS systems, as well as progressive JPEG compression on x86, x86-64, and Arm systems. On such systems, libjpeg-turbo is generally 2-6x as fast as libjpeg, all else being equal. On other types of systems, libjpeg-turbo can still outperform libjpeg by a significant amount, by virtue of its highly-optimized Huffman coding routines. In many cases, the performance of libjpeg-turbo rivals that of proprietary high-speed JPEG codecs. libjpeg-turbo implements both the traditional libjpeg API as well as the less powerful but more straightforward TurboJPEG API. libjpeg-turbo also features colorspace extensions that allow it to compress from/decompress to 32-bit and big-endian pixel buffers (RGBX, XBGR, etc.), as well as a full-featured Java interface. libjpeg-turbo was originally based on libjpeg/SIMD, an MMX-accelerated derivative of libjpeg v6b developed by Miyasaka Masaru. The TigerVNC and VirtualGL projects made numerous enhancements to the codec in 2009, and in early 2010, libjpeg-turbo spun off into an independent project, with the goal of making high-speed JPEG compression/decompression technology available to a broader range of users and developers.