Support mmc.getTaggedImage

[oeway]

The java interface has the getTaggedImage function, perhaps would be good to also make it available in the Python binding?

[marktsuchida]

@oeway This is a good point. The problem is that TaggedImage is a Java type, and one that we would like to phase out in the long term due to multiple issues (it exposes public data fields (bad in Java unlike in Python), and uses an antiquated version of JSONObject as part of its API).

(Also, much of the logic for putting together a TaggedImage is in MMCoreJ.i, rather than the common MMCore code.)

It would be nice to have something similar in Python, though. If adding such a thing, it would be good to learn also from a few more design mistakes that TaggedImage made: it puts metadata from different sources into a single bag, and string-concatenates device and property names with "-", so that unambiguous parsing is not possible.

[tlambert03]

fwiw, this was added to pymmcore-plus in pymmcore-plus/pymmcore-plus#246

it would be good to learn also from a few more design mistakes that TaggedImage made: it puts metadata from different sources into a single bag, and string-concatenates device and property names with "-", so that unambiguous parsing is not possible.

I very much agree with this. I implemented it as a match for now. but would love to see a better/formal spec for what those tags should actually be. this relates also to AcqEngJ, which continues with the pattern

[tlambert03]

safe to close this issue as not planned @marktsuchida ?

[marktsuchida]

Yes, the recommendation should be to use pymmcore-plus. There may be further improvements in MMCore and its API (rather than pymmcore, probably) to reduce overhead or more accurately define timing/concurrency, but that's a whole nother topic.