karl shah-jenner wrote:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bob Maxey"
:The disclaimer: Bob (me, not that Talbot feller) is not an expert when it
comes to ITPC. So I might be saying something that is old hat to some of
you.
:I bought a copy of Corel XARA when it first hit the shelves. What amazed
me then and still does to this day, is the ability to enlarge a XARA image
more than 25,000 times. Actually, more than 26,000 times, with a zero loss
of resolution and sharpness.
First a comment on Bob's posting. It *does* sound like a vector format,
or possibly some type of multi-resolution bitmap process (like ECW).
However, since none of us are likely to believe that you can create
information that wasn't there originally, small (real, not artifact)
details that are near the limit of resolution when magnified this huge
amount must have been there and preserved when the image was *reduced*
by this large factor.
Is Xara a vector graphics program - it SOUNDS like it!
Vector graphics certainly behave differently to bitmap graphics programs
and infinite resizing is inherant (like fonts) though I don't know how the
web would handle such objects.. Anyone?
k
Yeah, just like every other graphics format in use on the web. If the
browser supports it, the web will handle it. I'm not sure the original
browsers supported images at all. Png support is pretty new (So new
it's still broken in Internet Explorer). I think I can remember when
Jpg support was not universal, or maybe it was animated gifs?
All it requires is demand, and plugins will arrive, then browsers will
start incorporating it internally, then, before you know it, you'll not
be able to remember the world before it. Flash/Shockwave plugins are
pretty much universal these days. They implement a type of vector format.
Actually I have 2 amusing vector graphics stories which illustrate
something about vector graphics -- but probably more about the people
that use them :-).
The first is one of a government body that moved from hand drawn to
digitally stored vector graphics for maps (this is pre-gis, the images
were simply the maps themselves). One of the features was that instead
of a person having to manually crosshatch large areas, they could
describe areas as crosshatched and the computer would do all the boring
work of producing perfect crosshatching. Naturally, someone had to
design the crosshatching, and that task fell to someone who obviously
had a sense of humour. When these vector images were converted to a GIS
format, someone took a look at some of the cross hatching at a higher
level of magnification than it would ever have been seen at. One of the
hatch patterns was comprised of the "F" word (and a few extra lines)
repeated over and over...
The second one is a story of another government body that regulated
forestry. They had a vector mapping product, and were capable from the
beginning of looking at things in high magnification. So people took to
hiding things. One of the things that was hidden (and subsequently
discovered) was a very small vector image of a man urinating on a tree.
Steve
