Compressing alt.sex.pictures files

[Kent Paul Dolan]

barry at network.ucsd.edu (Barry Brown) writes:
> xanthian at zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) writes:
>>winans at sirius.mcs.anl.gov (John Winans) writes in news.admin:
>>>What a.s.p might be good for is a place to test image compression programs
>>>and stuff like that.  The acive users of the group would probably not want
>>>to see it go away and might be willing to work with others to try to reduce
>>>it's load on the net.
>>
>>Hmmm.  Good idea.  Here's one suggestion for an experiment.  Somewhere on
>>the net, a month or two back, there was a suggestion that a good way to
>>compress realistic images was to XOR scan lines after the first with their
>>predecessor line, then LZW compress the output.
>
>Problem:
>
>GIF files are already compressed.  If you're talking about compressing GIF
>files, you'll need to figure out a way to compress LZW-compressed files.

Nope, only considering finding a _much_ better way to compress the original
format than GIF provides.  Test results conveyed to me in private email
already have suggested my idea has merit.  Wish I could be the one to do it
and acquire the fame and glory and a compression scheme with my name on it,
but at least I put up the initial suggestion.

>If, on the other hand, you're talking about compressing the actual image,
>then you're headed for trouble because that means defining a whole new
>format.  With GIFs already well supported, you (or whoever decides to pursue
>this) will be in for a lot of opposition.

Find a way to store the same image in 1/5th the space GIF requires, and the
opposition will last about as long as a mid-summer snowfall.  A little disk
space is cheap, but the amount required by picture data squeezes lots of
corporate and individual pocketbooks, and will motivate a lot of software
retrofits of a new compression scheme.

GIF -> MagicFormat and MagicFormat -> GIF converters will cover the rest of
the problems, just like the overwhelming number of converters now in use.

Defining a "whole new format" for image data seems to happen once a month,
and defining a new compression scheme about every three months; I doubt
One More Format will slow people down much.

[Can you say n(n-1) converters?  I knew you could!  Where oh where is the
one standard image storage format we so desperately need?]

Kent, the man from xanth.
<xanthian at Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xanthian at well.sf.ca.us>