Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!umd5!purdue!i.cc.purdue.edu!h.cc.purdue.edu!s.cc.purdue.edu!ain
From: ain@s.cc.purdue.edu (Patrick White)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: GIF format
Message-ID: <2876@s.cc.purdue.edu>
Date: 27 Apr 88 00:26:34 GMT
References: <1419@hubcap.UUCP> <8965@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: ain@s.cc.purdue.edu.UUCP (Patrick White)
Organization: PUCC Land, USA
Lines: 28

In article <8965@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> doug@eris.UUCP (Doug Merritt) writes:
>The main reason for people to be interested in this format is that
>it is a machine-independent way to exchange color bitmaps. You can

   Unfortunately (?), IFF is better as GIF dosen't have anything that
tells how big the screen is (although it does tell how big the picture is
in pixels).  This means that in order to display the picture on a different
machine without distortion, one has to look at how big the picture is, and
guess what machine was used to make it so one knows what the pixel aspect
ratio is.. all this so one can display it without aspect ratio distortion.
Fortunately, it seems many programs don't actually use all the possible
features of GIF (like picture size) but usually just do full screen
pictures.. so it is fairly easy to guess what the aspect ratio was.
   Of course, this only matters to those who care about that kind of stuff,
but it looks much more impressive to display a pic from a different machine
without it looking too short or too narrow.
   How do I know all this (or at least guess most of it :-)?  because a friend
has been beating on GIF for the last few weeks (writing a GIF reader, or
translator, or something like that), and has kindly spent much time
impressing upon me what is wrong and why it matters.

   [opinion warning.. hit 'n' now]
   So, IFF is better in this aspect because any machine that reads in an
IFF picture has the decision about what to do if the picture was in a
different aspect ratio.

-- Pat White
ARPA/UUCP: j.cc.purdue.edu!ain  BITNET: PATWHITE@PURCCVM  PHONE: (317) 743-8421
U.S.  Mail:  320 Brown St. apt. 406,    West Lafayette, IN 47906