Subject: Re: Graphic Images
From: Hubert Figuiere (hfiguiere@teaser.fr)
Date: Fri Apr 20 2001 - 06:32:56 CDT
According to Dom Lachowicz <cinamod@hotmail.com>:
> >So why ask these apps to be able to handle arbitrary image formats, when
> >its within our power to ask them only to handle three (PNG, SVG, JPEG)?
>
> Because these apps already handle arbitrary image formats. We are
> (unnessarily) the limiting factor, not them. Should we ask KWord to remove
> those importers which we don't support? I think not. Should we advoate lossy
> conversions, hurting interoperability? Should we advocate their translating
> things into formats that we can understand because we're too dumb and not
> extensible enough to handle the others? Why not make every src="" URI in
> HTML necessarily point to a PNG? Let's see how many supporters we get for
> that. Differend image formats exist for very sprecific reasons. It'd be a
> crying shame if we didn't play nicely with all of those formats, and those
> apps that already do, regardless of how "open" or specified our format is.
> Why place unnecessary arbitrary restrictions upon ourselves and others,
> "just because"?
Actually, back to these days where there was no Netscape and where UNISYS
hadn't claimed LZW patent and GIF, every IMG SRC you could find where
pointing GIF pictures. Then, some people rightfully decided that JPG was
good for you and IMG SRC began to point to JPG. That broke NCSA xmosaic,
but not for a long time. Then, the GIF lawsuit raised and PNG being actively
developped to provide et free replacement for GIF, was more features, became
mature and was used. But this was not perfect as IE that has more and more
marketshare was still unable to handle them correctly... (neither was
Netscape).
Now, I yet have to find a IMG SRC that does not point to one of the three
file format above.
> We have to break out of this second-class application mentality.
This is NOT second-class mentality. Let's answer by some question.
Why do we speak only English on this list ?
Because this is the most common language denominator betweem us. Some speak
it better than the other, but we are able to undersand each other.
Why do we send text in these e-mails ?
Because this is the most common denominator too that anyone can decode
The image problem is the same. Just seing how much image format we
can have in RTF gives me some headache. Even more when several of these
formats are duplicate in term of features. By only supporting
3 image format in the ABW file format, and those format being
standard, you guarantee that anyone can decode ABW files without too
much efforts. We are not closed to foreign format. We are just trying
to not overcomplexify things.
Hub
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