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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!ucbvax!vax135!miles
From: miles@vax135.UUCP (Miles Murdocca)
Newsgroups: net.ai
Subject: Re: An Image Format Standard
Message-ID: <1130@vax135.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 18-Jul-85 09:33:16 EDT
Article-I.D.: vax135.1130
Posted: Thu Jul 18 09:33:16 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 20-Jul-85 02:25:21 EDT
References: <1187@pucc-k>
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Holmdel, NJ
Lines: 26
Keywords: Here's an idea

Rich Kulawiec at Purdue writes:

> It has been pointed out that one of the obstacles in the path of
> sharing research on machine vision and related areas is the lack of a
> common image format that would allow investigators to freely exchange
> images.  (The recent article by David Sher of the University of
> Rochester in net.ai comes to mind.)  It seems to me that perhaps the
> time has come for a committee to be formed, either by the IEEE or ACM,
> or both, to define such a standard.

Yes, we do need some standards.  But I don't want to wait for a committee
to be formed by ANSI (or IEEE, ACM) and have a monstrous standard produced
that is difficult to use.  How about this idea:  subscribers to the net
informally create a standard that fills their needs as well as the needs
of anyone else they can think of.  Net users will then proliferate / enforce
the standard at their own sites until the bugs get worked out and the
standard gains some acceptance.

For starters, I suggest this: every image (or set of images) will start
with a fixed size header that gives information on the rest of the image(s).
Such information could be X dimension (in pixels), Y dimension, type
of data (graphic or raster), number of bits per pixel, number of images,
etc.  Color maps and data would then follow.  Ideas or comments, anyone?

    Miles Murdocca, 4B-525, AT&T Bell Laboratories, Crawfords Corner Rd,
    Holmdel, NJ, 07733, (201) 949-2504, ...{ihnp4}!vax135!miles