LZW in IDL [message #39746] |
Wed, 09 June 2004 10:50 |
Jonathan Joseph
Messages: 69 Registered: September 1998
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While checking in on the whole LZW issue recently, I read the following
on an RSI website (http://www.rsinc.com/services/techtip.asp?ttid=3543)
"The LZW compression patent held by Unisys, which is the basis for their
claims surrounding the GIF file format, expired in the U.S. on June 20,
2003, however Unisys� patents in Japan, and Europe expire June 20, 2004,
and expire in Canada on July 7, 2004."
With the last of these patents expiring this summer, can we look forward
to using LZW encoding again in the next release of IDL, or is that a
pipe-dream? I don't have much dezire to create GIF images, but I do
create TIFFs, and in recent images I have found that using the packbits
compression actually creates larger files than when I use no compression.
-Jonathan
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