Nicolas Calimet <pov### [at] freefr> wrote in news:3D5### [at] freefr:

>> Ok, my fault... it was removed from Megapov for legal reason, and I did 
>> not know that the povteam was now outlaw enough to keep the gif code in.
> 
> 
>      I don't think that being able to _READ_ a GIF file makes POV-RAY
> outlaw. As far as remember the license problem comes when the software
> has to _WRITE_ in GIF format, because it must compress the file with
> the patented LZW compression.

It seems it is an old debate, since the license is a bit fuzzy, and Unisys 
is doing nothing to clear the point.
Some people (inlcuding Unisys?) think that the licence covers both reading 
and writing. Other people argue that only writing is patented.
So some people dropped completely the Gif format, just to be sure, while 
others still read it. And some just ignore the patent and write in Gif 
format :-)

I remember having seen a page explaining the author made a shareware able to 
write Gif files. He asked Unisys a licence. But since he wanted to ask only 
a small amount of money for his software, hence generating too few revenues 
to Unisys, they told him they were not interested in giving him a licence: 
too much work to what it's worth... And they suggested that if he releases 
his software anyway, they *may* even *not* sue him :-) Again, sueing is 
costly, and not worthy against a small company/individual. But it remains 
risky :-(
Note that I have heard that this patent will expire next year, for what it 
is worth.

>      However I'm maybe wrong. I just decided not to use GIF any longer
> for quite some time now (since PNG is far better anyway) so I've simply
> forgot what's the actual problem  ;op  [the one regret is animated gifs
> that could still be useful]

I agree for the PNG format, I favor it for most of my images now. Old IE 
browsers (and probably Netscape too) handled it badly or not at all. Eg. in 
IE5, a link pointing directly to a PNG image made it to save it as binary 
file instead of displaying it, while it could display PNG images in Web 
pages...

The MNG format may be a solution for animated images, but it comes so late 
most browsers (all?) don't display it. Maybe in the far future?
Otherwise, there is Flash, but it is not obvious to encode with free tools.

-- 
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Philippe Lhoste (Paris -- France)
Professional programmer and amateur artist
http://jove.prohosting.com/~philho/

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