Crossfire Archive
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Re: CF: images & caching.
>
> As a note - the disadvantage of moving away from GIF is that all existing
>images must be converted, and any future work must be done in the same format
>or converted to it. This may or may not be easier (if we assume most people
>are still working on unix, an editor that supports png/ppm/gif with
>transparancy support is then needed, or tools to do the conversion.)
Conversion is easy I think. I converted some XPM images to
PNG and it was quick and easy with ImageMagick. Although I
didn't look real close at the new image. I'm not sure what
it did with the palete, stuff like that. And I'm also not sure
how it dealt with transparency..
> PNG and various transluncy levels: While the image may support it, it will
>likely be up to the OS/graphics system if it can do anything useful with them.
> I know for a fact that X does not have any real way to draw a translucent
>image over another image - these calculations and color adjustments would need
>to be done outside of X/via the client. So in that sense, the png form really
>doesn't buy anything on that platform - I am not sure if other systems support
>it better or not.
To get translucense to work, you would need to work with all the images
in PNG format, ie, when combining multiple images, they all have to
be PNG, then once you have your finished composite image, you
convert it to the OS native format. I know this isn't how the
X client does things, I believe it just does an XcopyArea and
uses the SHAPE x-extension to take care of the transparent
pixels.. But I think translucency would work fine on any OS, although
I'm not going to say for sure until I try it...
> GIF: Except for the possible patent issues, I think this format would make th
>most sense if a switch is made - old enough that tools for most every system
>exist, good compression for the type of images crossfire deals with, supports
>transparency, and native support in java and web viewers.
Both netscape and IE have native PNG support...
I've found several classes for PNG on the net, although I don't
know how good they are..
I'd rather see a format image with more 'feature sets' picked, if
we decide to change image formats, so that the client writers
have more flexibilty to do things graphics wise if they
so chooose.
I think I'll experiment a little bit with PNG in windows
a see how it goes...
-Scott
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