Richard Urban wrote:
Understood--thanks to you and to Tim Au Yeung.Matt, Generally compression isn't recommended for a few reasons. While Zip and LZW are fairly reliable compression algorithms, they add another layer of complexity to the file. If there is such a problem, it would be in the different implementations, not in the algorithm, which is mathematically perfect. Perhaps nobody has gotten the hard data you're asking for, but if not, it's probably only because other industries do not doubt the reversibility of compression in the way we do. I mean, zillions of files are compressed and uncompressed every day, and for years, almost every PC hard drive was dblspaced or drvspaced.It's possible that the compression could make unpacking them more difficult down the line. I've heard it suggested that this is particularly true if there is some bit level corruption of the file, which could cause the compression to fail. (comments from people who get under the hood with files would be appreciated...sometimes I feel like these are digital urban legends). I'd be interested in seeing any hard data on this. I understand that you're talking about problems not necessarily visible to the eye, or that we just wouldn't worry about in a spreadsheet or memo, but in demonstrated practice, common forms of reversible compression are safe for files. Can I go on that? How much more convinced can we get? I'm all for open standards, especially for museums and libraries--and ZIP is at least as open (now) as most RAW formats. In any case, there are other compression algorithms that are well-tested and more open than ZIP has been in the past. So it just seems like this is a minor issue compared to the complexity problem.The other concern is over the patents held on both compression algorithms. There was a time where the patent holders were attempting to claim control over the patents, suggesting that you'd need a license to unpack your files (or least the people making the software you use would). These mostly seem to have gone away, but the patents are still out there. Generally this is why we've steered away from proprietary formats towards open standards. Thanks, Matt Richard Urban Graduate School of Library and Information Science University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign [email protected]-----Original Message----- From: Matt Morgan [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, November 29, 2005 10:39 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [MCN SIG: Digital Media] Uniiversal Photographic Digital Imaging Guidelines Newman, Alan wrote: |
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