Re: i can't win...

Once upon a time, Al Kossow wrote:
>
> I wish I knew what format was the most universal for high-compression CCITT G4
> tiff data.. People bitched because the scans were too big, and took too long
> to download, so I compressed them using the highest compression B&W format that
> was a 'standard' and now people can't decode them...

Well, TIFF is more like "Microsoft Word Document" - it's a multiplicity
of mutually-incompatible standards :)

.JPG, as I hope we all agree, is crazy for schematics, for the reasons
already discussed.

Back to the .GIF side - has anyone considered that 2- or 3-bit greyscale
in a .GIF is probably *more* readable than straight monochrome due to
the anti-aliasing that a greyscale image would provide?

The only missing statistic from the the comparative study, IMHO, is .ZIP.
If all you're after is lossless compression large image files, .ZIP may
well provide results comparable to Zonn's format.

One caveat - if Zonn's format contains optimizations for long vertical
lines as well as long horizontal lines, it may well outperform .GIF and
.ZIP when applied to schematic drawings.

(This may only hold true for cases where the scan was performed with the
schematic being very well lined-up with the scanner during the scanning
process. For fun, take a .GIF of a schematic and rotate it by 2-3
degrees, and watch the size grow...)

Later,
Doug.

-- 
Douglas W. Jefferys           | 
Star Data Systems             | 
Email: djeffery@multipath.com |