On Wed, 15 Aug 2001, Clarence Verge wrote:
> On Tue, 14 Aug 2001 23:24:34 -0400 (EDT), Steve <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > Well, that convinces me... *pdf is definitely "better."
> > I can easily read the name of the town on the map,
> > Paramaribo in the pdf file, but I would never have been
> > able to make that out for certain on the same section of
> > the bmp map. (not to mention, the colors are different)
>
> The colors are different because your box and Glenn's are set
> differently. You see what Glenn saw in that .ZBM. What did the
> author intend ? Re: the definition, the same argument. <g>
Or are the colors different because of inherent
limitations in the BMP file format? Or perhaps the
color depth of the capture utilities. Why is it that
there seem to be so many incompatible BMP formats
floating around? It's almost as bad as TIFF!
(Have you ever tried looking at a patent drawing from
the US Patent Office website? What a nightmare!)
As to what the author intended, I'm sure he intended
the land mass to show as pale yellow, since that's what
I see in both Acroread 4 and xpdf 0.91
> > File formats all have their trade-offs. PDF gives
> > great detail at the cost of a little more size. How
> > could it be otherwise?
>
> My $.04:
> The problem with pdf is what is PDF ? They keep changing the damn
> format and you have to download another bloated package every six
> months !
Strange. I've had Acroread 4 at least since Jan 2000.
That's at least 20 months without downloading another
bloated package. ;-)
> And you can't make them yourself if you were thoughtless
> enough to want to. :(
I do agree with you on that point. I would be
much happier if pdf was open-sourced.
> File formats DO have trade-offs, and although ZBM may not do any
> more than let you see what the author WANTS you to see,
Huh? Is this what the author wants you to see?
http://wizard.dyndns.org/bmp.png
(2k - cropped screenshot)
> PDF is a
> very poor trade. If HTML wasn't designed to move around the screen
> when you send it to someone with a different display size, it would
> - in combination with .gifs or .zbms - make a much better solution.
An international patent consortium has decided that
TIFF is detailed, suitable for printing out, and
accessible. (try getting a TIFF from the US Patent
and let me know how "accessible" it is!
http://www.uspto.gov/)
They are, however, definitely not suitable for
full-size viewing on your computer screen.
A 70K TIFF from the US Patent Office takes up a
2320x3408 patch of screen real estate!
(divide those sizes for typical 300 dpi printing, and
you see that it equals 7.73"x 11.36")
> I'm not pushing .ZBMs. I just hate .PDFs and would like to see ANY
> substitute. <G>
I'm not pushing .PDFs either. I just don't like
Microsoft Windows Bitmap images, and would just like to
see each format used where it belongs. PDFs for
documents which need to be printed out a specific way
and BMPs on Windoze.
- Steve
