Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!decwrl!sgi!paul@manray.sgi.com
From: paul@manray.sgi.com (Paul Haeberli)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Images news group
Message-ID: <44516@sgi.sgi.com>
Date: 12 Nov 89 05:56:02 GMT
Sender: paul@manray.sgi.com
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA
Lines: 78

On the subject of an Images news group:

I think that if people limit the size of their images to 50 kbytes 
to start out with, this will encourage people to work on better 
and better image compression techniques.  How about Hi-res
luminence and low res chroma?

I wouldn't mind seeing images posted in any format as long as
a converter is available.  This ties in with the paragraph
above.

To put this entire discussion into perspective, lets do a litle
analysis of comp.graphics traffic. Over the past few weeks here's
a break down of the larger messages transmitted on comp.graphics:

	14,872 bytes 649 lines: X11R3 Color data base. 
	Paul Raveling from USC Information Sciences Institute Oct 20.

	10,948 bytes 215 lines: Image file format discussion 
	Allen Braunsdorf from Purdue Oct 20.

	150,136 bytes 2507 lines: Seisomograms of SF earthquake.
	Ken Schmahl of Sun Microsystems. Sent on Oct 23.

	15,701 bytes 372 lines: GPLOT CGM interpreter.
	Phil Andrews at Pittsburg Supercomouting Center. Oct 27

	40,328 bytes 671 lines: Here's a GIF image fall.gif
	Paul Haeberli at Silicon Graphics Oct 31.

	14,654 bytes 366 lines: INTERACT'90 Conference Announcement.
	R. Winder at ucl. Nov 3.

	47,022 bytes 777 lines: Here's a GIF image domain.gif
	Paul Haeberli at Silicon Graphics Nov 7.

	19,455 bytes 359 lines: Raytracing News
	Eric Haines at 3D/Eye Inc. 28 Oct.


Notice that one message from Ken Schmahl was three times the size
of one of my GIF images and also please note that the size of 
the accumulated discussion about transmitting images over
comp.graphics exceeds 45k bytes.  

	45,253 bytes 997 lines: 33 messages discussing how to handle 
	images on comp.graphics.


I don't see any problem with any of these postings listed above.

Its interesting to compare traffic on comp.graphics to net.sources.unix:

	comp.sources.unix:     ~317000 bytes per day.
	comp.graphics: 		~37836 bytes per day.

I'd love to see 7 images from the computer graphics community
every week.  If there was 1 image transmitted every day this would 
increase the volume from 38 Kbytes up to 90 Kbytes.  There are 
several other news groups that easily exceed this volume. Even at a 
miserable 1200 baud this would take a total of 12 minutes and 30 seconds 
to transmit.  Now tell me that horror story again about your 8 Hour network 
feeds . . . . . . . 

One kind of comment really upsets me - its the one that implies
if its an image - it has no value on the net.  Are these people
blind?

I would love it if people would share the results of their 
research on the net.  How about also trading enviroment maps
and "interesting" periodic texture maps?

A name with comp.binaries.images is fine with me!!


415-962-3665
Paul Haeberli
paul@sgi.com