On Wed, Jul 16, 2003 at 06:19:27PM +0200, Sven Neumann wrote:
> > HOWEVER, this might be a good time to think about whether we'd
> > prefer a compressed format that we can random-access de/compress
> > on the fly instead of going via a huge (and with image data we
> > can easily be talking HUGE) temporary intermediate file.
>
> If we would compress the image data in the archive there would be no
> need for compression of the archive. Sure you could gain a few bytes
> by compressing the XML but since the already compressed image data
> doesn't compress well and in the worst case even gets larger, I don't
> see why anyone would want to compress the archive.
Agreed.
I have a more concrete suggestion (I'm still favoring ZIP files because
they can somehow be handled without a GIMP which is useful, e.g. if they
are broken): Make an uncompressed ZIP (or maybe compress the XML part
only). The XML describes the structure and all attributes.
GIMP-Image.ZIP
|
+- image.xml
|
+- comment.{txt,html,xml}
|
+- layer1.png (stored uncompressed)
|
+- layer1.1.png
|
+- layer2.png
...
|
+- image-thumbnail.png (optional)
|
+- whole-image.png (flattened image, optional)
IMO this is a sane approach. It has lots of benefits:
- image contents are accessible without a GIMP
- thumbnails can be extracted easily
- a user can mess with the image
- images could be generated with external tools
(just create the XML, add some images as layers, here you are)
- it could be scanned for Java-viruses :->
Bye, Tino.
--
* LINUX - Where do you want to be tomorrow? *
http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/linux/tag/
