Help about Microsoft PowerPoint -Reply

[Thomas Dowling]

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From: Dan Lester <DLESTER at bsu.idbsu.edu>
To: Multiple recipients of list <web4lib at library.berkeley.edu>
Date: Tuesday, June 03, 1997 11:49 AM
Subject: Help about Microsoft PowerPoint -Reply

>...From what I can see, there is NO reason to not
>convert all your web images to .jpg, since the last several
>versions of all the browsers support them.  In addition, the
>files are smaller and you don't have to worry about being
>sued on licensing. 
>
>I still have a couple of .gifs on some of my pages, but only
>because I've not had time to convert them.  I sure don't put
>any NEW ones on them. 

I disagree.  I think there's still a place for GIF, though mostly because
PNG has not yet received widespread support.  It's lossless, so I can edit
and re-edit the same image without eventually getting noticeable
degradation; it supports transparency in its endearingly simple way; and it
allows me to reduce colors, which I think is a bonus to someone displaying
a handful of different images on a display with less than 24-bit color. 
It's obviously not the best choice for large and/or photorealistic images,
but I don't think it's a bad choice for smaller images like line art,
icons, and logos.  That's especially true for extant GIFs--converting GIF
to JPEG always seems to look worse than converting something like TIFF to
either GIF or JPEG.

BTW (since this question seems to come up every time GIF's future gets
discussed), Dan points out that there are intellectual property issues
regarding the GIF format.  That's true; the compression algorithm used in
GIF87a and GIF89a is protected by a patent currently owned by Unisys, but
Unisys is extracting royalty payments only from software developers whose
software reads or creates GIF images, not from end users, web authors, etc.
 My guess is that for a product like PowerPoint, Microsoft will consider
the royalties to Unisys a justifiable expense for a long time to come; my
copy of PowerPoint from Office95 inserts GIFs with no problem. 
http://www.unisys.com/LeadStory/lzwfaq.html for Unisys's statement.


Thomas ("But those XBM files have *got* to go") Dowling
OhioLINK - Ohio Library and Information Network
tdowling at ohiolink.edu