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From: Caspar Evans <caspar@hyway-ferranti.co.uk>
To: "'tiff@sgi.com'" <tiff@sgi.com>
Subject: RE: JBIG library 
Date: 	Wed, 4 Jun 1997 09:15:39 +0100
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Thanks for that Tom. Looks interesting. FYI, the patent license is $5000 
("blocking patent only") and $15000 ("blocking and other relevant 
patents"), both flat fee, royalty free, unlimited use. I'm not entirely 
sure what the cheaper options means you aren't allowed to do, tho'. It's 
probably somewhere in the docs....any idea anyone?

With regard to TIFF, JBIG is a datastream compression algorithm without a 
file format, but the JBIG alliance (thanks, Dr.Bartz) want to put JBIG into 
TIFF in a similar to JPEG. To quote from the JBIG Alliance White Paper 
"What JBIG currently lacks is a standard implementation for storing 
JBIG-compressed data in popular file formats such as TIFF. The JBIG 
Alliance is addressing this issue, and expects to announce a recommendation 
for JBIG in TIFF during October 1996." So an extension to libtiff may make 
sense, although the patent issue is a bit off-putting.

Hope I'm not veering off topic.


Caspar Evans                  HyWay-Ferranti Ltd., St. Peter's House,
caspar@hyway-ferranti.co.uk   23 Cattle Market Street, Norwich, NR1 3DY, 
UK.	
Tel. +44 (0)1603 618801       http://www.hyway-ferranti.co.uk/home.html
Fax. +44 (0)1603 610887       "No, I'm not in denial."


-----Original Message-----
From:	Tom Lane [SMTP:tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us]
Sent:	Monday, June 02, 1997 11:27 PM
To:	Caspar Evans
Cc:	tiff@sgi.com
Subject:	Re: JBIG library

> Does anyone know if any code exists for producing JBIG files in a
> relatively pain free way? Libtiff extension?

JBIG compression is not to be found in the TIFF specification,
so I dunno why you would think it should be a libtiff extension.

Markus Kuhn has put out a fairly nice software kit for JBIG,
which last I heard was available from
ftp://ftp.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/pub/doc/ISO/JBIG/
I'm not sure what file format it follows; certainly not TIFF.

A problem that Markus has blithely ignored is that JBIG is hip-deep
in patents.  I would not recommend using it in any remotely commercial
context without obtaining the necessary patent licenses (and no, I
don't know how to go about doing that).

			regards, tom lane
			organizer, Independent JPEG Group

