Stefano Mazzocchi wrote: > Stephan Michels wrote: > > 2. > > Gif is the best output format, because most of the browser can handle the > > transparency of GIF images. > > In the US (and other countries, europe is safe, at least for now), there > are patent issues with GIF generation. How do you plan to handle these?
To my knowledge, not GIF, but the LZW algorithm is patented. We are using the GIFOutputStream from http://www.shetline.com/java.shtml, which avoids the algorithm at the price of worse compression. We still have to contact the author of GIFOutputStream, because the class is free for not commercial use only. >From http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gif.html: >It is possible to make non-compressed images that act like GIFs, in that >they work with programs that decode GIF format. This can be done without >infringing patents. These pseudo-GIFs are useful for some purposes. > >It is also possible to create GIFs using a patent-free run length encoding >but this doesn't achieve the compression that one normally expects in a GIF. We would have preferred PNG, but unfortunately IE does not handle transparent PNG properly. There is one more legal issue. The MathSerializer works best with MS Symbol font .-( If somebody knows a free font, which contains the same symbols, we would be very happy. We will be careful not to submit the MathML package, before the legal issues are solved. Martin -- Martin Holz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> phone: 0049-30-39977 218 FIZ CHEMIE BERLIN --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
