About .gif and .png

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
October 5, 2003

Dear SW List and Daniel, Stuart, Sandy...
Wonderful news that .GIF is now in the public domain. Thanks for
telling us...So...could we build in an "Export to GIF" feature in
SignWriter Java, Daniel?

And thanks too, for the information about PNG....I knew there was a
problem with some browsers, because we had some bounce from the SW
ListServe, so perhaps when our Archives on the web tried to process the
graphic in PNG, it couldn't because of the problems with Explorer - who
knows? ;-)

The http://www.irfanview.com is one more good free way to create GIFs,
so it is not expensive any longer!

Val ;-)


--------------------------------

On Sunday, October 5, 2003, at 03:25 AM, Daniel Noelpp wrote:
> ..png and .gif are both very fine. There was a patent with
> gifs, so for many people gifs weren't an option. But this
> patent ran out spring this year and gifs are free to use
> now. Why use .png then? png has a better support for
> transparency than gifs. But we don't need transparency
> (and Internet Explorer doesn't support transparency with
> png or not very well -- sue Microsoft).
>
> In a summary, both work very well but gifs are more wide
> spread and the license issue is gone.
>
> For image format conversions I use the free program
> Irfanview under Windows (for Apple I have still to look
> for a program I like). http://www.irfanview.com.
> It is totally free (no ads). Usually I make a screen
> snapshot and paste it directly into Irfanview and
> save it as the format I choose.
>
> FYI (for your information).
>
> Cheers
> Daniel
>
>> I agree, of course, that when it comes to small SignWriting diagrams,
>> that GIF is best, for me at least. The problem is that some software
>> does not include a way to create GIFs, since CompuServe, which created
>> the GIF format, has had some restrictions on software developpers...it
>> is a matter of us working it out with them...and not all graphics
>> programs have done that...so for example, MicroSoft Paint does not
>> always have a way to create a GIF...it depends on the version you have
>> of that software etc...meanwhile JPEGs are always available, so it may
>> be that Nana doesn't have the capability to create a GIF?...
>