From: tgl+@cs.cmu.edu (Tom Lane)
Newsgroups: alt.graphics.pixutils
Subject: Re: Way to get rid of HSI header in JPEGs
Date: 17 Dec 92 06:11:10 GMT
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon

davidsen@ariel.crd.GE.COM (william E Davidsen) writes:
> In article <BzB66E.4qM.1@cs.cmu.edu>, tgl+@cs.cmu.edu (Tom Lane) writes:
> | In my opinion, HSI has single-handedly done more to confuse the JPEG file
> | format situation than anyone else.  Proprietary file formats are not a good
> | thing.
> 
>   While I'm not particularly a supporter of HSI, I don't think that JFIF
> is so good that any other format simply serves to confuse the issue. HSI
> got their product out very early on, and it doesn't seem that anyone was
> using JFIF widely at that time. Expecting someone to conform to a
> standard which is not in use at the time the software was written, and
> which I *believe* was still a proposed standard at that time, is
> simply not realistic.

Your history is faulty.  The first couple of versions of HSI's software
supported *only* JFIF format.  They invented the HSI proprietary format in
(according to the revision history in their documentation) version 1.5 of
gif2jpg which was released in May '91.  It's true that this predates the
public release of the free JPEG software, but at that point it was quite well
agreed among all the major players that JFIF was going to be the near-term
interchange standard (and by major players I mean Apple, Adobe, and their
ilk, not small fry like HSI or the Independent JPEG Group).

HSI had some technical reasons for inventing their JPEG-GIF amalgam format.
Mainly, they wanted to ensure that converting a GIF to their format would
never cause an increase in file size.  I think that their whole rationale
was misguided --- JPEG was never intended for representing GIF-style palette
color images --- but that's a separate argument.  My gripe here is simply
that by inventing a *proprietary* format, which they could not as a small
company support across any large range of systems, they have done the Net
no service.  We are seeing the fruits of that disservice every time that
someone posts an HSI-format image in the pictures groups.

And no, I am not here to defend JFIF as a technically superior standard.
(If I'd had any say in its definition, JFIF would look different.)  In fact,
it's fairly likely that if HSI had made their format public-domain to begin
with, then the free JPEG software would support it.  They chose to go for a
short-term commercial advantage instead, and the rest of us are now paying
the price in confusion and wasted bandwidth.

Also, fox@rei.com (Fuzzy Fox) comments:
> ... there is still a point of confusion, in that both
> formats are generally given an extension of .JPG.  If HSI would release
> newer version of their software which do not try to claim that HSI files
> are JPG files, then things would tend to smooth out more quickly.

Things would be a LOT better if HSI had chosen to call their files ".hsi" or
something like that.  It's too late now though, since copies of gif2jpg are
now firmly ensconced on zillions of little BBS systems with users who would
probably not hear about or bother to get a new version if it did come out.

In any case, my suspicion is that HSI has abandoned gif2jpg as a dead
product (most of the market for it was killed off by the free JPEG
software).  As far as I know, there has been no new release of gif2jpg since
v1.5 (May 1991).  Considering that there are known major bugs in 1.5, this
is not the track record of a supported product.  There's not much chance
they will re-release just to change the file naming convention.

			regards, tom lane
			organizer, Independent JPEG Group