On Sat, 15 Jun 2002, Atte Andre Jensen wrote: > On Fri, 14 Jun 2002, Phil Taylor wrote: > > John Chambers wrote: > > >GIF is only used because browsers understand it. > > > > No, it's used because it's the most efficient way of compressing a > > black and white (or 256 colour) picture into a small file. > > True in low resolution files, but not in print quality.
Yes, that's the big advantage of vector formats, they don't count the dots, so they don't scale up the same way. Necessarily. Though I have seen postscript which appears to contain embedded bitmaps ... Browsers, of course, are mainly dealing natively with low-res images. Which works well in our context - gif for screen images of tunes, and abc for printing. > > The newer > > PNG format is just as good, and free, but not yet as popular. > > Why? For exactly one reason: browsers (the big one esp) were not > supporting png until recently. And since one must expect quite a few > users to still be using their 4.0 or 5.0 browsers it's still not "safe" to > use png on web pages. Sad, since png is superior to gif in all ways Yes. I thought of switching the images in my "Tunebook" over to png a couple of years ago, but a little bit of checking and asking around convinced me that there were just too many browsers that wouldn't do it. Newer versions might, but that doesn't mean older ones have disappeared. When does the Unisys LZW patent run out, anyway ? It can't be long now, surely ? -- Richard Robinson "The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes" - S. Lem To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
