🚀 go-pugleaf

KOWALSKI@APOLLO.MONTCLAIR.EDU (LUDVIK KOWALSKI  wrote :
>Another "low cost" activity.

SNIP SNIP

>Would you guess that I am trying to send a picture of a saw with the handle
>on the right side? Very awkward! It would be nice if pictures could be sent,
>received and printed as easily as text. How far are we from that luxury?
>Can somebody summarize the status of the "picture transfer technologies"?

 There are a variety of techniques used to "transfer graphics files"
via internet services.  SInce the most common service is e-mail :
1. The graphic must be in digital form of course...
   MacIntosh and PCs have a variety of graphic file formats
    as well as proprietary text file formats (eg Word 5.1 etc).
2. Generally, to transfer any non-ASCII (text) formatted file
   it must be "encoded" into ASCII format if it is to be received
   by most e-mail programs.  Binhex and  uuencode
    are some commonly used ASCII encoding protocols.
3. If the file is to be available for both Mac and Dos machines,
   the file needs to be in a format common to both platforms.

   The common "transfer" formats are  :
   a. ASCII for text based files
   b. GIF  (graphic interchange format) for graphics and pictures
   c. JFIF (JPEG) format for high quality photographic images.

Note that JFIF is a compressed format that can reduce a file's
size by a factor of 1:6  or more.

SO here is a common procedure for the MacIntosh point of view :
1. A graphic is scanned, created in a graphics program, or
   grabbed as a "screen snap shot" and saved in PICT format.
2. The PICT file is converted to GIF or JFIF format using
   another program.
3. The GIF file is encoded into ASCII format with another
   program.
4.  At this point the file may be treated as any other text file
and appended to, enclosed within, etc ordinary e-mail.
The recipient however must undo the previous steps to
retrieve the file in its original format.

Tedchniques similar to that described may be used to
send any computer file.  Graphics file tend to be
very very large in size unless they are first compresssed.
Landon

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lwood@ednet1.osl.or.gov    |   Landwood@aol.com