[Rock-dev] changes for base::type::PointCloud

[Jakob Schwendner]

Hi Alex,

On 10/10/2011 02:36 PM, Alexander Duda wrote:
> I looked into the base type point cloud and I missing the ability to
> save informations for each point. Because of that and a different naming
> conventions than we use, I would like to do the following changes:
>
> * rename pointcloud.h to point_cloud.h
> * rename base::samples::Pointcloud to base::samples::PointCloud
envire also uses Pointcloud instead of PointCloud. Should stay as it is 
for consistency.
> * move base::Point to base::samples::point_cloud::Point
> (otherwise Point should go into its own header)
ok.
> * add a new vector field for channel informations
>
> OLD VERSION:
> namespace base {
>      typedef base::Vector3d    Point;
>
>      namespace samples {
>          struct Pointcloud
>          {
>              Time time;
>
>              std::vector<base::Point>  points;
>          };
>      }
> }
>
> NEW VERSION:
> namespace base{ namespace samples {
>      namespace point_cloud {
>          struct Channel
>          {
>              std::string name;
>              std::vector<float>  values;
>          };
>          typedef base::Vector3d Point;
>      }
>
>      struct PointCloud
>      {
>          base::Time time;
>          std::vector<point_cloud::Point>  points;
>          std::vector<point_cloud::Channel>  channels;
>      };
> }}
>
> I talked to the guys which are using the type and it is fine for them
> therefore I am going to push the changes at the end of the day if no one
> is yelling ;-).
About the channel information, the problem is, that you most likely want 
very different types (or at least this was the case in envire). One way 
would be to use a uint8_t instead of the float and provide some 
functions to convert the data to your type, like e.g. getChannel<Type>( 
name ).
It's doubling the metadata mechanism in envire, but then I don't have a 
good solution right now, to combine envire and orogen types better, 
without rewriting a lot.

Jakob