libvips/doc/src/cppintro.tex

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\section{Introduction}
\mylabel{sec:cpp}
This chapter describes the C++ API for the VIPS image processing library.
The C++ API is as efficient as the C interface to VIPS, but is
far easier to use: almost all creation, destruction and error handling issues
are handled for you automatically.
The Python interface is a very simple wrapping of this C++ API generated
automatically with SWIG. It adds a few utility methods noted below, but
otherwise the two interfaces are identical other than language
syntax.
\subsection{If you've used the C API}
To show how much easier the VIPS C++ API is to use, compare \fref{fg:negative}
to \fref{fg:invert-c++}. \fref{fg:invert-py} is the same thing in Python.
A typical build line for the C++ program might be:
\begin{verbatim}
g++ invert.cc \
`pkg-config vipsCC-7.18 \
--cflags --libs`
\end{verbatim}
The key points are:
\begin{itemize}
\item
You just include \verb+<vips/vips>+ --- this then gets all of the
other includes you need. Everything is in the \verb+vips+ namespace.
\item
The C++ API replaces all of the VIPS C types --- \verb+IMAGE+ becomes
\verb+VImage+ and so on. The C++ API also includes \verb+VDisplay+,
\verb+VMask+ and \verb+VError+.
\item
Image processing operations are member functions of the \verb+VImage+ class
--- here, \verb+VImage( argv[1] )+ creates a new \verb+VImage+ object using
the first argument to initialise it (the input filename). It then calls the
member function \verb+invert()+, which inverts the \verb+VImage+ and returns a
new \verb+VImage+. Finally it calls the member function \verb+write()+, which
writes the result image to the named file.
\item
The VIPS C++ API uses exceptions --- the \verb+VError+ class is covered
later. If you run this program with a bad input file, for example, you get the
following output:
\begin{verbatim}
$ invert jim fred
invert: VIPS error: format_for_file:
file "jim" not found
\end{verbatim}
\end{itemize}
\begin{fig2}
\begin{verbatim}
#include <iostream>
#include <vips/vips>
int
main (int argc, char **argv)
{
if (argc != 3)
{
std::cerr << "usage: " << argv[0] << " infile outfile\n";
return (1);
}
try
{
vips::VImage fred (argv[1]);
fred.invert ().write (argv[2]);
}
catch (vips::VError e)
{
e.perror (argv[0]);
}
return (0);
}
\end{verbatim}
\caption{\texttt{invert} program in C++}
\label{fg:invert-c++}
\end{fig2}
\begin{fig2}
\begin{verbatim}
#!/usr/bin/python
import sys
from vipsCC import *
try:
a = VImage.VImage (sys.argv[1])
a.invert ().write (sys.argv[2])
except VError.VError, e:
e.perror (sys.argv[0])
\end{verbatim}
\caption{\texttt{invert} program in Python}
\label{fg:invert-py}
\end{fig2}