>The first attempt to replace compress was hit by another software
>patent, one week before its planned release. So we found another
>person, Jean-Loup Gailly, who wrote the program that is now gzip.
>
>The new algorithm was significantly better than compress--not a
>revolutionary advance, but enough for users to notice. gzip was
>quickly adopted for distribution of compressed tar files and for
>saving space on disk. However, the new algorithm has not succeeded at
>replacing LZW for compressing images. The WWW is still mostly using
>GIF format, which is based on LZW. PNG format, which uses the gzip
>algorithm, is used only rarely.
>
>This is why www.gnu.org does not use GIFs--to remind people that the
>community needs to move away from that format. The net can still
>escape from the grip of the LZW patents, if the popular browsers can
>be made to support PNG.
Thanks for the pointer Richard. I've wondered why PNG hasn't
superceeded GIF yet, and figured that it was supported. I am
running Netscape Communicator 4.05 and I just tried to load a PNG
into it. The PNG displayed just fine. As such, I am going to
use *ONLY* PNG graphics on my web pages, etc from now on. If
someone can't display them, then it is time for them to upgrade
their browser to something that does, and perhaps dump Win95 for
Linux as well.
Thanks.
-- Mike A. Harris - Computer Consultant - Linux advocate Now also: PNG Advocate.
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