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These notes are with respect to the AFNI GIFTI C API.

• This API is built on top of expat, and is released into the public domain.

• The main functions are:

  gifti_read_image, gifti_write_image, gifti_free_image

• The exported functions in gifti_io.h are intended for users of this API, particularly those prototypes listed first.

• The gifti_xml functions are not intended for external use.

• Taking pointers from the gifti_image structure should be okay (providing they are then set to NULL), but it may be less confusing to copy data out.

• To save memory, it is suggested to steal the darray[k]->data pointers, and set them to NULL.

Speeds: (last checked in version 0.7)

Since I/O speed was a question when deciding whether to use XML for
GIFTI, read times (in seconds) from a mac G5 are provided.

(no b64 error checking)         (with b64 error counting and skipping)

ascii     base64    base64gz    base64    base64gz  surface name
-----     ------    --------    ------    --------  ------------
 0.05       0.00     0.00        0.01     0.00      aoantonym
 0.37       0.08     0.12        0.10     0.13      pial
 7.20       0.95     0.75        1.14     0.79      time_series

todo:

• on alloc failure, propogate error up and return NULL

• accessor functions

• indexed reading

• test doxygen comments

• #ifdef __cplusplus

• select node list

• display all valid attributes? DTD? valid attribute values given the name? known metadata?

• gifti_remove_gim_metadata()

• gifti_remove_DA_metadata()

• gifti_remove_all_metadata()

• gifti_MD_delete(name)

• post XML read: validate gifti structure - check for UNKNOWN attributes - done?? "invalid darray XX" - check that MD names are unique