Kyle Barrow wrote:
> The application is not going into an ISP but onto corporate servers.
> Normally this would mean I could get away with the custom GD libraries
> (which you put me onto Mika - thank you, I owe you some drinks at the
> next party) but the specs require the application to be portable and
> able to run on any of any of their servers worldwide.
>
> Their IT people are not about to recompile every PHP box with modified
> GD libraries let alone what legal would have to say about UNISYS
> licensing issues. Incidentally, I have heard of UNISYS going after
> companies in Japan which is a something of a worry.
>
> What was DoCoMo thinking when the settled on the GIF format when PNG
> was available and the licensing problems with UNISYS infamous?
GIF is simple. A basic GIF decoder that doesn't handle animated GIFs
needs about 1K of space in ROM and 17K of temporary space in RAM (plus
the buffer to hold the decoded image). Obviously scaling, colour-
remapping and animation take a bit more code.
PNG is rather more complex. It would require significantly more memory
to support. This is not a problem on a PC, or on today's cell-phones,
but when i-mode was being designed I think this would have been a
significant factor. MNG (animated PNG) is even more complex.
Much as I dislike the outdated GIF format, I think DoCoMo made a
sensible decision there. At least they didn't come up with crap like
WBMP.
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Received on Wed Aug 22 13:56:53 2001