1. Re: paint gif/compression
Nate Brooman wrote:
> It's illegal to have a freeware program to make/read GIF files.
> Unisys and IBM, the patent holders, charge expensive fees for
> letting shareware or commercial programs use GIF. I was nearly
> sued for using GIF in a freeware program, but I got wind of it
> just before and changed ALL of my freeware imagers to my own format.
Apparently, this is only *half* right. According to the Gnu folk
(http://www.gnu.org/):
"Decoding GIFs is a different issue. The Unisys and IBM patents are both
written in such a way that they do not apply to a program which can only
uncompress LZW format and cannot compress."
The official Unisys/IBM line is:
"No license or license fees are required for non-commercial,
not-for-profit GIF-based applications or for non-commercial,
not-for-profit GIF-freeware, so long as the LZW capability provided is
only for GIF. However, a license is required if freeware is incorporated
into, or sold or distributed with a commercial or for-profit product,
introduced in 1995 [or later], or enhancements of products that were
introduced prior to 1995."
You can apparently use jpeg instead.
The GNU people have a patent-free image compression called png, but I
don't know what kind of support that has gotten - they use jpegs on
their web pages. The png site is at:
http://www.cdrom.com/pub/png/
I assume that, for the same reason you can't patent a gif decoder, there
is a free version of unzip, a pkunzip clone. It can read files
compressed by pkzip, but will not compress them. The source code is
available at:
http://www.cdrom.com/pub/infozip/UnZip.html
There is an "unencumbered" compression algorithm (read: FREE) available
called zlib. It was developed by the same folks who did unzip. It is
apparently a *very* good algorithm, and works across multiple platforms.
For more information, you can check out:
http://www.cdrom.com/pub/infozip/zlib/
Perhaps someone might want to try porting it to Euphoria? Or, since the
source is in C, Robert might consider adding it as a feature in
Euphoria..? 
-- David Cuny
