> I remain unconvinced that all this effort on porting libpng > isn't wasted time. If the current png reading code doesn't > work, I'd rather see that improved. Andrey and I went through > it a year ago and made it pass all the tests in the PNG suite.
Oh, the primary target is GeoTiff and the secondary one is Graphviz. I'm trying to produce a marked-up map of the area I live in and the format of the maps and aerial photographs I have sourced from the South African Surveyor General's office are in GeoTiff format. Since I needed zlib and libjpeg and GD wants libpng, it has been instructive to cut my teeth on npng. I had a recollection that png(1) did not do 24-bit images, but no proof, so I went ahead and started from a different end. I did discover that PNG isn't widely used, that the patent on LZW has expired and that I have plenty left to learn about graphics (thanks to all contributors, not least forsyth for the Microsoft papers - td's contribution does not need mention on this forum). As for Breadpng(), there's no ways I'm going to study the actual on-disk representation of PNG or any of the other formats without very sound reason. Life is way too short :-) That does not mean that I do not appreciate the value of doing it, or that I am not grateful to those who took it upon themselves to do it, of course. Philosophically, I'm at odds with the Plan 9 approach, but it's a pragmatic decision. ++L
