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Re: CF: win32 client and XPM



On Thu, 5 Mar 1998, Brian Thomas wrote:

>> server, to easy client implementation. Just because platform foo
>> supports "PNG" as a native format doesn't mean we should use PNG ---
>> after all, platform bar probably supports YYT as it's native format,
>> so why not add YYT as well? PNG is a lot more difficult to read, so
>> using PNG instead of XPM means that the client implementation for _one_
>> platform is slightly simplified (since no image conversion is needed),
>> while adding a lot more work for all the other client programmers.

>> Remember, Windooze is not the only platform. Make it simple for
>> everybody, not just for Windows-Programmers.

I'm kinda confused here -- PNG is *not* at all native to Windoze.  BMP and
WMF is.  PNG was primarily developed on Unix for use as a multiplatform,
efficient graphics format (compare to XPM, which was developed on X for
X).

XPM is an X native format, and when you look at the specs it's a pretty
raunchy format.  I wouldn't ever want to store or send anything in XPM if
there's any way I could get out of it.

>	I too more or less agree with this. THe format of the 
>	images sent from the server should be in the simplest,
>	*least bandwidth* impacting format. We should highly prize
>	performance over ease of implementation (server side).

XPM loses, then.  PNG is decent at that.  JPEG has too high a CPU
utilization to really be worth the effort.  GIF and PNG are roughly equal,
although GIF can't be used because it's proprietary.

Hmm... We could also roll our own format, but I really don't think it's
worth our time -- Wavelets achieve amazing compression, but we're sending
TINY images.

As you can tell, I vote for PNG.  Why not -- there's portable, free
sourcve code out there intended for free use.

>							-b.t.

-Billy

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