Xref: utzoo alt.graphics.pixutils:177 comp.graphics:12590 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!uwm.edu!rpi!uupsi!sunic!tut!tukki.jyu.fi!jyu.fi!otto From: otto@tukki.jyu.fi (Otto J. Makela) Newsgroups: alt.graphics.pixutils,comp.graphics Subject: Time to upgrade the GIF standard ? Keywords: GIF CompuServe GIF87a Message-ID: Date: 27 Jul 90 07:57:55 GMT Sender: news@tukki.jyu.fi (News articles) Followup-To: alt.graphics.pixutils Organization: Justice HQ, Mega-City One Lines: 25 I'd like to start a discussion on upgrading the GIF standard, on the hope that someone from the CompuServe development team is listening... Things I'd like to see on the hypothetical GIF91a standard: * better compression - some asymmetric 2D compressions squeeze the picture real nice and are reasonably fast when decompressing; compression takes more time, of course * pixel shape information - on the PC with a VGA you can get about five different pixel ratios, and on just any machine with different graphics modes you end up with different shaped pixels in different modes; the current standard does not support any pixel information * more colors per image - now that VGAs are common, we've hit the end of the standard; also for example the Amiga is able to show 4096 colors (albeit restrictedly) * define better color coding - for some reason, GIFs made on a Macintosh tend to come out a lot darker on a PC (this could be a problem with the Mac software, but I suspect that it's something more esoteric like the color characteristics of a Mac display/display card vs. a PC VGA) These are the main points that come to mind. Comments, anyone ? -- * * * Otto J. Makela (otto@jyu.fi, MAKELA_OTTO_@FINJYU.BITNET) * * * * * * * * Phone: +358 41 613 847, BBS: +358 41 211 562 (CCITT, Bell 2400/1200/300) * * Mail: Kauppakatu 1 B 18, SF-40100 Jyvaskyla, Finland, EUROPE * * * * freopen("/dev/null","r",stdflame); * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *