[Declared in "../apps/image/kdu_image.h"]
Support for reading a wide range of image file formats is NOT a significant objective for the Kakadu tools. Although the present object is easily extended to work with any number of different file formats, we realize that most application developers will prefer to use their own (probably much more sophisticated) tools for interacting with image files — some applications might not need to work with uncompressed image files at all.
This class provides a uniform interface to any number of image readers, supporting different image file formats. Specific file format readers are selected and created by the constructor and destroyed using the explicit destroy function. The kdu_image_in object itself contains only a pointer to the internal reader object. Copying a kdu_image_in object has no impact on the internal image reader, but simply serves to provide another interface to it.
An individual image file may provide one or more image components. When multiple components are available, each component may be accessed independently, reading lines one by one. The object manages any buffering required to cater for applications which read the components at different rates, although this is not recommended. It is also possible to access image component lines in disjoint segments, known as tile-lines. This capability is provided to assist tile-based compression configurations.