Re: Binary standards for images and sounds

["Carl Edman" <cedman@cedman.remote.Princeton.EDU>]

Philip Brown <philb@soda.berkeley.edu> writes:
> >>>>[From Carl Edman]
>     

>     >From Mark Wedel <master@rahul.net>:
>     > This is not a direct reply to the image format posted by Carl,
>     > but a few notes.
>     

>     Well, that is well met because this not a direct reply to your  

>     proposal.  Rather I'd to express the opinion that Xpm seems to be
>     a   very unsuited format for general distribution.  While it does
>     look   clever and cute it seems to be very far from being
>     compact.  That may   be a forgiveable failing, but it also looks
>     like a pretty heavy format   to interpret properly in all cases. 

>     Clients would have to write tons   of code to handle it well.    

>     And before someone suggests libXpm, using   it would foreclose
>     the opportunity to run clients on anything but X   systems which
>     I thought was one of the main reasons for the switch to  

>     client/server. 

>     

> The code for Xpm is public! it's not like it's a commercial
> library... the souce is all open!!! Porters would just hav to replace
> a few X calls with their own windowing software stuff. I don't think
> there are actually that many X calls in the library!

The same is true of ghostscript (as I suggested in the paragraph you  
cut).  Does that mean that we can use EPS ?  That certainly would be a  
win for us who already have postscript on our system, but an extra  
burden for those who do not (like most X systems).  Still, I think it  
would be to ask to much for everybody to install just to run a simple  
client.  


> It's not supposed to be "compact". It's supposed to be "thorough".

Am I allowed to quote that back at you the next time you demand that  
only some items which are in the view of the user should be shown to  
the client ?

	Carl Edman