FW: First Attempt at Crypto Library

Andrew J Bromage ajb@spamcop.net
Thu, 24 Apr 2003 11:59:29 +1000


G'day all.

On Wed, Apr 23, 2003 at 09:26:30PM -0400, Matthew Donadio wrote:

> AVI and QuickTime formats also a have a similar issue, where they really
> specify a file format, and you can use a variety of codecs in them.

In these cases, each codec will have its own interface to plug into
QuickTime.  It's the same with a file format (e.g. OpenPGP) into which
you can "plug in" ciphers, hashes, string-to-key algorithms etc.

One issue with Deflate and Jpeg is that the "codecs" can be used in
different formats in different ways (e.g. Jpeg is used in JFIF, PDF and
TIFF).

This is one reason why I think that generic versions of "codecs" are
probably a bad idea.  Far better to group by the general area which
they serve (e.g. Crypto, Image, Text etc).

Cheers,
Andrew Bromage