diff --git a/TODO b/TODO
index 0dbeb6ea..17ed05e7 100644
--- a/TODO
+++ b/TODO
@@ -1,20 +1,10 @@
 - also VipsFormat ... could this replace vips_image_new_from_string()? or
   could we call this from vips_image_new_from_string()? 
 
+  at the moment, VipsFormat subclasses never get made, we just use the classes
+  ... we'd need to start making real vipsformat objects for this to work
 
-
-
-
-
-- use this system to do file format options, eg.
-
-  	vips copy fred.v fred.jpg{quality=90}
-
-  need to keep the old arg parser for compat
-
-  how do we get the new one called? will each writer need to test for a ':'
-  char?
-
+  how much effort would this be to change?
 
 
 
@@ -24,6 +14,49 @@
   what would the API look like?
 
 
+	VipsImage *
+	thing( VipsImage *in1, VipsImage *in2 )
+	{
+		VipsImage *t;
+		VipsImage *out;
+
+		if( vips_add( in1, in2, &t, NULL ) )
+			return( NULL );
+		if( vips_add( in1, t, &out, NULL ) ) {
+			g_object_unref( t );
+			return( NULL );
+		}
+		g_object_unref( t );
+
+		return( out );
+	}
+
+  yuk! how can we simplify this? keep refs in an array?
+
+	VipsImage *
+	thing( VipsImage *in1, VipsImage *in2 )
+	{
+		VipsImage *t[5] = { NULL }; 
+		VipsImage *out;
+
+		if( vips_add( in1, in2, &t[0], NULL ) ||
+			vips_add( in1, t[0], &out, NULL ) ) {
+			vips_unref_array( t, 5 );
+			return( NULL );
+		}
+		vips_unref_array( t, 5 );
+
+		return( out );
+	}
+
+  vips_unref_array() just unrefs all non-NULL pointers in the array
+
+
+	
+
+
+
+
 
 
 - try out:
diff --git a/libvips/format/format.c b/libvips/format/format.c
index 22b5da6a..17639ebc 100644
--- a/libvips/format/format.c
+++ b/libvips/format/format.c
@@ -317,6 +317,9 @@ vips_format_class_init( VipsFormatClass *class )
 	VipsObjectClass *object_class = (VipsObjectClass *) class;
 
 	object_class->print_class = vips_format_print_class;
+
+	object_class->print_class = vips_format_print_class;
+
 }
 
 static void