GNU GIF problems - was [ANNOUNCE] Mailman 1.0rc1
bwarsaw@python.org writes:
<snip>
...this will be the final 1.0 release.
The next step is to create the GNU web pages.
<snip>
Mailman will now display Dragon's small logo on (most) generated pages;
<snip>
You need to read the instructions in the INSTALL file for putting mailman.gif in a place... ^^^
Hi there! Since Mailman is a GNU project, won't there be problems if it makes heavy use of GIFs? I personally do not care if GIFs are used or not, but I suspect that Stallman will be quite displeased if Mailman itself or the Mailman pages at the GNU site use GIFs. I just wanted to point this out before too much work was invested.
There are no GIFs on the GNU web site because of the patents (Unisys and IBM) covering the LZW compression algorithm which is used in making GIF files. These patents make it impossible to have free software to generate proper GIFs. They also apply to the compress program, which is why GNU does not use it or its format.
Cheers, benjy
1975 Cahaba Valley Road (205) 988-4268 Indian Springs, AL 35124 benjy@alum.mit.edu
"BBT" == Benjamin B Thomas benjy@alum.mit.edu writes:
BBT> Hi there! Since Mailman is a GNU project, won't there be
BBT> problems if it makes heavy use of GIFs? I personally do not
BBT> care if GIFs are used or not, but I suspect that Stallman
BBT> will be quite displeased if Mailman itself or the Mailman
BBT> pages at the GNU site use GIFs.Good point. It's not that hard to convert them to PNGs (or JPEGs? GNU.org seems strangely silent on this) for the 1.0 release. If Dragon doesn't have time to do it, I'll do it before the final release.
Thanks, -Barry
Quoting "Barry A. Warsaw" bwarsaw@cnri.reston.va.us:
Good point. It's not that hard to convert them to PNGs (or JPEGs?
When saving as JPEG, be sure to play around with the quality setting a little bit. Unfortunately, JPEGs tend to smear sharp borders a little bit since the compression is lossy. We might get lucky and have this actually enhance the "rubber stamp" look of Dragon's logo (It would have been a definite Bad Thing(tm) for any of the other possible logos due to their sharp lines).
I just tried saving the logos as JPEG with XV at 100% quality with 0% smoothing, and the results are fairly acceptable. dragonsmall.gif grew by only 200 bytes, while dragonlogo.gif grew by about 5K. Take a look at
http://mail.indiansprings.org/people/benjy/dragonsmall.jpg and http://mail.indiansprings.org/people/benjy/dragonlogo.jpg
Use the browser to flip back and forth between the original files to compare (they are also at the same location). Use them if you like, or try using GIMP or another tool to see if you can get any improvement.
PNG will better preserve the image quality, but there are enough 3.x and early 4.0 browsers in use that PNG might not be a good choice from an end user point of view. Of course, you can always include both versions and let the individual webmaster decide if he wants to support non-PNG browsers. The patent problem is really too bad, since GIF was the best all around format for these particluar images.
Cheers, benjy
1975 Cahaba Valley Road (205) 988-4268 Indian Springs, AL 35124 benjy@alum.mit.edu
On Wed, 5 May 1999, Benjamin B. Thomas wrote:
Quoting "Barry A. Warsaw" bwarsaw@cnri.reston.va.us:
Good point. It's not that hard to convert them to PNGs (or JPEGs?
Hmmm... Well, for one thing PNG's will be easy to get, I actuallyorigionally created the images as PNG's then converted them to GIF's. (the images were created with the debian-packaged version of the GIMP, which dosen't support GIF's for exactly this reason.) I'll hunt arond for the origionals
When saving as JPEG, be sure to play around with the quality setting a little bit. Unfortunately, JPEGs tend to smear sharp borders a little bit since the compression is lossy. We might get lucky and have this actually enhance the "rubber stamp" look of Dragon's logo (It would have been a definite Bad Thing(tm) for any of the other possible logos due to their sharp lines).
:>I just tried saving the logos as JPEG with XV at 100% quality with 0% smoothing, and the results are fairly acceptable. dragonsmall.gif grew by only 200 bytes, while dragonlogo.gif grew by about 5K. Take a look at
http://mail.indiansprings.org/people/benjy/dragonsmall.jpg and http://mail.indiansprings.org/people/benjy/dragonlogo.jpg
Those look pretty good.
-The Dragon De Monsyne
On Wed, 5 May 1999, Benjamin B. Thomas wrote:
There are no GIFs on the GNU web site because of the patents (Unisys and IBM) covering the LZW compression algorithm which is used in making GIF files. These patents make it impossible to have free software to generate proper GIFs. They also apply to the compress program, which is why GNU does not use it or its format.
Well. Check out libungif or gd. These packages use no or non-LZW (free) compression and they work fine.
Regards: Kevin (Balazs)
participants (4)
-
Balazs Nagy -
Barry A. Warsaw -
Benjamin B. Thomas -
The Dragon De Monsyne