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Sun seeks input on Java imaging technologies

Sun Microsystems on Friday said it has added its Java Advanced Imaging (JAI) and JAI Image I/O Tools projects to the java.net collaboration site for Java developers.

Featuring a standard interface for cross-platform imaging, JAI is intended to simplify the development of imaging applications for systems ranging from thin clients to workstations, according to Sun. Portable imaging applications can be built for geospatial, medical, network, and government imaging markets.

JAI Image I/O serves as an adjunct to JAI, providing a pluggable framework for reading, writing, and "transcoding," or converting, image data and meta data. Reader-writer plug-ins are provided for Bitmap (BMP), JPEG, Wireless BMP, and other image formats.

"What we're trying to do is get the community a bit more involved with [these technologies]," said Brian Burkhalter, staff engineer at Sun.

The two APIs have been around for some time; JAI was developed in 1999 and the I/O adjunct came in 2002, Burkhalter said. "They're well-established products that are being used by a number of companies in the industry," said Burkhalter.

NASA, for example, has used JAI for viewing data acquired from the Mars Exploration Rover, Burkhalter said.

The imaging projects can be found at https://media.dev.java.net/.