Ken <tyl### [at] pacbellnet> wrote in...
>
> Was this a POV-Team decision or simply that of a patch writer ?

I made the decision myself after reading the Unisys statement very
carefully.  Because I am one of the primary distributers of MegaPov in the
U.S., I felt that this was necessary to protect myself form any negative
legal action.  This decision was also supported by Smellenbergh, since a
patent on LZW is also recognized in many European countries.  I can't speak
for the POV-Team at this moment, but I will say that the topic has been
discussed.

> I for one will greatly miss the gif format if it is lost in the
> official versions of the program.

I understand.  Unfortunately, we may be left with little other choice, given
the current state of LZW licensing.

-Nathan Kopp

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Nathan Kopp wrote:
> 
> Tony[B] <ben### [at] panamac-comnet> wrote...
> > Unisys idiots. They're diggin' their own grave. No problem. We'll just use
> > PNG then.
> 
> I'm glad you feel that way and I hope the other users will also understand.
> Removing GIF functionality was a difficult decision to make, be we ended up
> deciding to play it safe and not risk any lawsuits.
> 
> -Nathan

In the process of making the "french docs project" (which is not a 
simple translation), I decided to ban the use of GIF's for
illustrations,
in favour of PNG, being aware of the unisys issue.

There's much more interesting info at 
 www.burnallgifs.org

Fabien.

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wrote:

>I have found Perl subroutines to
>find out height and width of GIF and JPG.
>
>As soon as I find such a subroutine
>also for PNG, I change all my web sites.

Try the PerlMagick modules from ImageMagick.


Peter Popov ICQ : 15002700
Personal e-mail : pet### [at] usanet
TAG      e-mail : pet### [at] tagpovrayorg

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Cool! Now my photon mapping image works again :)
  And the source code compiled without problems (after converting CR/LF's).
Very good.

-- 
main(i,_){for(_?--i,main(i+2,"FhhQHFIJD|FQTITFN]zRFHhhTBFHhhTBFysdB"[i]
):5;i&&_>1;printf("%s",_-70?_&1?"[]":" ":(_=0,"\n")),_/=2);} /*- Warp -*/

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In article <3936DD51.984F52EA@pacbell.net>, Ken <tyl### [at] pacbellnet>
wrote:

> Nathan Kopp wrote:
> > 
> > Tony[B] <ben### [at] panamac-comnet> wrote...
> > > Unisys idiots. They're diggin' their own grave. No problem. We'll just use
> > > PNG then.
> > 
> > I'm glad you feel that way and I hope the other users will also understand.
> > Removing GIF functionality was a difficult decision to make, be we ended up
> > deciding to play it safe and not risk any lawsuits.
> 
> Was this a POV-Team decision or simply that of a patch writer ?
> 
> I for one will greatly miss the gif format if it is lost in the
> official versions of the program.

Me too, I hope they'll keep it in the official versions...
  Anton

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Anton Raves wrote:

> Me too, I hope they'll keep it in the official versions...
>   Anton

It may not be such a problem, since everything that can be done in POV with a GIF
looks like it can be done with a PNG file, including the possibility of filtering a
colour on the basis of its index number in the palette. The main immediate problem
could be the lack of (or poor) support of  the various PNG flavours (the palette
version and the alpha-channel version) by some common freeware, shareware and
low-cost image processors.

G.

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Warp wrote:
> 
>   And btw (to someone posting about gimp), gimp supports png. I don't see
> the problem.

My problem is that I have been (so far) unable to use images made from
the Gimp as heightfield unless I used grayscaled GIFs.  


-- 
Francois Labreque | The surest sign of the existence of extra-
     flabreq      | terrestrial intelligence is that they never
        @         | bothered to come down here and visit us!
  attglobal.net                                  - Calvin

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Bob Hughes wrote in message <393786d4@news.povray.org>...
>I also have to mention that someone I know of was using 16-bit Gif in
POV-Ray
>but I never have so I don't understand it's format.  Was from a Fractint
>output I believe, well actually I have no idea anymore.

That's the .pot format.  There are exactly two programs in the world that
support it: POV-Ray, and Fractint.

Mark

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Gilles Tran wrote:

> Anton Raves wrote:
>
> > Me too, I hope they'll keep it in the official versions...
> >   Anton
>
> It may not be such a problem, since everything that can be done in POV with a GIF
> looks like it can be done with a PNG file, including the possibility of filtering a
> colour on the basis of its index number in the palette. The main immediate problem
> could be the lack of (or poor) support of  the various PNG flavours (the palette
> version and the alpha-channel version) by some common freeware, shareware and
> low-cost image processors.

PNG DOES everything GIF does but for animated GIF's (which are supported by MNG).
Plus,
PNG does a lot more (just read the documentation about sophisticated image compression
preprocessing for one example).

PNG is supported by rel 4 browsers (IE4 supports it, there is just a problem: you can
add and IMG tag to a page but for unknown reasons drag-dropping the PNG file is not
supported, so many people think IE4 is not PNG aware).

GIMP works beautifully with PNGs.

Last but not least, PNG is supported by free and open source libraries (batteries not
included...)

Bye!!!

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Mark Wagner wrote:

> That's the .pot format.  There are exactly two programs in the world that
> support it: POV-Ray, and Fractint.

Make that at least three: I was able to convert a .pot file to PNG in
the GIMP.

-Mark Gordon

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