[Coco] GIF

[KnudsenMJ at aol.com]

Yep, I had heard the story of how some company (Unisys, or CIS) had thrown a 
damper on GIF usage for a few years by trying to collect patent royalties.

I agree that letting something become common as dirt and then jumping up with 
a patent lawsuit is dirty pool.  Sort of like SCO suddenly claiming that 
their UNIX patents read on Linux.  I hope that gets settled soon (and not in SCO's 
favor).

There has been concern among patent experts about "submarine patents", which 
are those that are pending for a long time (and hence still kept secret), and 
finally the patent gets approved and wham!  Retroactive lawsuits against 
everyone who's re-invented and been using the same technology for the last few 
years!

Back to GIF -- my copy of ACDSee under Windows has no qualms about creating 
and reading GIFs.  Probably they paid their dues.  No, it doesn't send a 
quarter to Unisys every time I write out a file :-)

My el cheapo Adobe Photo-Deluxe (came with the Fuji camera) lists some file 
formats I haven't heard of -- will check and see if PNG or PNM are in there.

Yes, Photo Deluxe can save to .PNG format, and -- does not list GIF as an 
option!
ACDSee does not mention PNG, but it read the PNG file (that I just now made 
from Deluxe) just fine.  FWIW, the PNG file is 3x larger than the GIF made by 
ACDSee (both starting from a JPG).  Maybe PNG retains 24-bit color, instead of 
the 256 color palette of GIF.

Yes, that's right -- when I edited the PNG down to 256 colors, its file 
became a little smaller than the GIF.  And apparently "Portable Network Graphics" 
has always been a save option in ACDSee -- I just never paid it any mind before.

So now I know of PNG.  And it can do Truecolor (24-bit).  Thanks guys.  
--Mike K.

--Mike K.