File Format Objects

File format object classes provide access to data stored within files of certain types. For example, the IDLffXMLSAX and IDLffXMLDOM classes provide access to attribute information stored in .xml files. The IDLffLangCat class also provides access to XML data. However, this object allows you to access XML data stored in language catalog files (.cat), which can be used to support internationalization. File format objects may or may not have a graphical element that can be displayed.

Table 2-4: File Format Objects 

Format
Object Class Information

DICOM

Objects of the IDLffDICOM class contain the data for one or more images embedded in a DICOM Part 10 file. Use this object for read-only access to the data.

The IDLffDicomEx class represents an extended IDL interface to DICOM format files, which includes read and write capabilities. The IDLffDicomEx object is available as a separately-purchased IDL module, and is described in Medical Imaging in IDL.

DXF

Objects of the IDLffDXF class contain geometry, connectivity and attributes for graphics primitives.

Note - Also see "XDXF" (IDL Reference Guide) for information on directly displaying a .dxf file.

JPEG 2000

Objects of the IDLffJPEG2000 class provide an interface to files in the JPEG 2000 format.

Language Catalogs

Objects of the IDLffLangCat class provide an interface to IDL language catalog files. See Using Language Catalogs (Application Programming) for usage details and examples.

Motion JPEG2000

Objects of the IDLffMJPEG2000 class provide a way to create and display Motion JPEG2000 animations. See Animations (Using IDL) for more information.

MrSID

Objects of the IDLffMrSID class are used to query information about and load image data from a MrSID (.sid) image file.

MPEG

Objects of the IDLgrMPEG class allow you to save an array of image frames as an MPEG movie.

ShapeFiles

Objects of the IDLffShape class contain geometry, connectivity and attributes for graphics primitives accessed from ESRI Shapefiles.

VRML

Objects of the IDLgrVRML class allow you to save the contents of an Object Graphics hierarchy as a VRML 2.0 format file.

XML

XML Parser — Objects of the IDLffXMLSAX class represent an XML SAX level 2 parser. The XML parser allows you to read an XML file and store arbitrary data from the file in IDL variables. See Using the XML Parser Object Class (Application Programming) for further details.

XML DOM — The Document Object Model (DOM) describes the content of XML data in the form of a document object, which contains other objects that describe the various data elements of the XML document. Objects of the IDLffXMLDOM Classes classes represent items in an XML document; the items can be modified and the XML document file itself written to disk using these classes. See Using the XML DOM Object Classes (Application Programming) for further details.

See the File Format Objects category of the "Object Class Library" (IDL Quick Reference) for a list of file format objects.