Re: GIF vs JPEG

Phillip M. Hallam-Baker (hallam@dxal18.cern.ch)
Wed, 1 Feb 1995 11:32:54 +0100


Before this flamewar reaches meltdown :-

1) JPEGs is good, all browsers should support them pronto :-)

2) GIF has advantages over JPEG in some areas but is unsatisfactory because :-
1) Limited to 8 bit colour.
2) Patented *VARIANT* of algorithm - had compuserve known they
could have avoided the problem. but thats submarine patents
for you.

We need a replacement for GIF because JPEG is no use for editing, each compress/
decompress cycle degrades the image quality.We could use lossless JPEG but
that is a different story.

Neither format has gamma correction values built into the system which is a pain
for browsers like Arena which do gama correction themselves.

Compuserve (and many others) are kicking arround a spec for a GIF24 standard.
I think we should let them get on with it :-)

--
Phillip M. Hallam-Baker

Not Speaking for anyone else.