[Inkscape-devel] Surface synthesizer?

Is there any particular reason that the morphology filter uses something called a "surface synthesizer" (or something along those lines)? Its time complexity currently depends on the structuring element size, and I wanted to fix that, but to do that I need to be able to keep some history, as well as delaying the output until enough data has been gathered. Is this possible at all within this scheme? If not, is it okay if I just copy-paste ink_cairo_surface_synthesize - gut it - and write a few simple loops? (Or am I missing something?)