PNG graphics format?

[John Soward]

> TIFF is too complex to be a network standardized, platform
> independent graphics format. There are still many problems
> with TIFF files, e.g. working with adobe photoshop I
> discovered there is some kind of incompatibility with how IBM
> and Macintosh TIFF files are written and recognized in
> NEXTSTEP.
>
	I don't see how TIFF is any more complex than PNG. Just because TIFF  
has been around long enough for people to bastardize it doesn't mean it is not  
a good format. Any format that is "expandable" will at some point be  
expanded, and then some things will become "incompatible".

> I personally think PNG's loss-less compression, which is more
> effective than TIFF's loss-less compression, and its
> interlaced features is perfect for network image standard.
>

	I'm not against PNG or it's gzip compression stuff, and I'm all for a  
new format, and PNG seems pretty good. I must be or I wouldn't have burned  
several hours writing a filter...but I'd like it to do more than that one kind  
of compression! It even has a byte in the info for "compression_type". But it  
claims that it "must be 0". If we could offer a "1" that used JPEG-ish  
compression, I'd be perfectly willing to switch everything over to PNG...Sure  
it's lossy, but sometimes it just doesn't matter that much...Check out the PNG  
and JPEG versions of the PNG logo at  
http://quest.jpl.nasa.gov/info-zip/people/greg/pngpic2.html
the PNG version is nearly 7x larger, and really doesn't look 7x better...

---
John Soward		<a href="http://www.uky.edu/~soward">JpS</a>
Systems Programmer 	'The Midnight sun will burn you up.'
University of Kentucky    (NeXT and MIME mail OK)         -R. Smith
:::I'm not speaking for UK. I may not even be speaking for myself:::