Bell tolling for PNG graphics format

really interesting article..

it was only recently, whilst installing The Gimp, that i discovered
that the LZW compression used was a proprietry format and required an
extension - to be used only in countries not covered by the unysys
patent (!) - however, the non-commercial/profit nature of the gimp
implies that this should not be a problem anywhere else either (see
http://www.wingimp.org/faq.php?conid and
http://lpf.ai.mit.edu/Patents/Gif/unisys.html )

would be interested to hear of any (attempted) prosecutions for
infringment - anyone ? takes me back to the days when Yves Piguet's
GifBuilder was about as sophisticated as it got (and image crunching
competitions seemed to be geek de rigueur) wonder if the patent is one
of the reasons it's no longer available at download.com

btw.. did the png ever *really* take off ? I never really used them as
compatibility seemed a problem, but that was a while ago i guess…

neil



gifbuilder
On Monday, June 9, 2003, at 02:31 pm, t.whid wrote:

> http://news.com.com/2102-1032_3-1014236.html?tag=ni_print
>
>
> story regarding PNG format and what the expiration of the GIF patent
> means for it.
> –
> <twhid>
> http://www.mteww.com
> </twhid>
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hiya Neil,

responses below, glad you found the article of interest.

At 17:03 +0100 6/9/03, neil jenkins wrote:
>really interesting article..
>
>it was only recently, whilst installing The Gimp, that i discovered
>that the LZW compression used was a proprietry format and required
>an extension - to be used only in countries not covered by the
>unysys patent (!) - however, the non-commercial/profit nature of the
>gimp implies that this should not be a problem anywhere else either
>(see http://www.wingimp.org/faq.php?conid and
>http://lpf.ai.mit.edu/Patents/Gif/unisys.html )

++
t:
never really used The Gimp myself tho it runs on macosX my OS of
choice. but yea. soon you'll be able to output GIFs without this
'extension' which is a good thing i suppose. i would really like PNG
to become the de facto standard instead of GIF but I guess we'll be
waiting a while if it ever happens.

Apple may be (and i stress MAY BE) building SVG into their browser,
Safari. now THAT would be cool. if they could force MS to build it
into MSIE (through a demonstrated demand that MS wouldn't be able to
deny) we would be on the cusp of a whole new dynamic web. weeehoooo.

>
>would be interested to hear of any (attempted) prosecutions for
>infringment - anyone ? takes me back to the days when Yves Piguet's
>GifBuilder was about as sophisticated as it got (and image crunching
>competitions seemed to be geek de rigueur) wonder if the patent is
>one of the reasons it's no longer available at download.com
>
>btw.. did the png ever *really* take off ? I never really used them
>as compatibility seemed a problem, but that was a while ago i
>guess…

++
t:
it didn't ever *really* take off on the web. it's biggest claim to
fame is being the working format for macromedia's fireworks (or it
was back in version 2, haven't used it for years). the problem always
being MS's refusal to make IE support the alpha transparency on the
Windows version. (you can get it to work but you need to use
non-standard MSIE-only CSS filters).



–
<twhid>
http://www.mteww.com
</twhid>