From: dansmith@Autodesk.COM (Daniel Smith)
Newsgroups: alt.graphics.pixutils
Subject: Re: SDSC Image Tools and PBM Plus
Date: 7 Jan 93 20:57:23 GMT
Organization: Autodesk Inc., Sausalito CA, USA

In <mrd.726425982@lisa> mrd@ecs.soton.ac.uk (Mark Dobie) writes:

> In <1ifp9tINN2ov@network.ucsd.edu> nadeau@sdsc.edu (Dave Nadeau,,45062) writes:

> >In response to the SDSC Image Tools release posting, Jeff Hanson wrote:

> >	>>While I agree completely about the usefulness of source and would love
> >	>>to have for these tools in particular, do not pass up the opportunity
> >	>>to have the best single program conversion tool, imconv.

> >To which Steve Lamont replied:

> >	>Don't forget pbmplus *is* available in source code and does 99 percent
> >	>of what imconv does (and often does it faster!).  It's available with
> >	>the X11 distribution in the contrib directory or from your favorite
> >	>FTP site (wuarchive.uwstl.edu comes to mind).

> >As the authors of the SDSC Image Tools, we feel we must respond to this
> >posting to help clear up any misconceptions.  The SDSC Image Tools differ
> >in significant ways from the PBMPlus package.  The following rather long
> >message details some of these ways.

> SDSC Image Tools. They sound very impressive. I thought some of the points
> in here were a little hard on pbmplus, given the nature of its development.

> The two packages have different philosophies about how things are done.
> I personally like the pbmplus approach which allows the user to control
> (on the command line or in scripts) what goes on, but I can see for


	I too plowed through Dave Nadeau's posting, and found myself
really objecting to the tone before I got to the end of it.  PBMPLUS
has its place (and a very good one at that), and Dave Nadeau seems to
take the tack of comparing useful standalone binaries/source with
a library that most endusers are not going to be able to use right off the bat...

	They're two different things, and each has their place.

	On top of that, PBMPLUS covers a wider variety of formats than
SDSC Image Tools, and there is a version (is it pbmlite?) that Jef released
that's meant to be used as a library to call from your own source.

	Dave Nadeau made a large point about all of the support phone calls
SDSC receives about the tools.  Well, yeah, sure you're going to
get a lot of calls *if few have the library source and most can't refer
to it to figure something out*.  Does Jef get an overwhelming amount
of email and phone calls about PBM?  I don't think so, maybe I'll ask him
next time I see him, or maybe he can comment on that here...  the point
is that the source is out there and people can use that to figure things
out on their own (or via a couple of newsgroups).  If SDSC released their
source, and it was discussed in newsgroups, chances are good that their
phone calls would *diminish*.

	I'd guess that the best of both worlds would be achieved by adding
some of the SDSC formats to pbm, and updating the library version of pbm.

	Sorry if I'm ranting a little.  The thing I object to is being
told how great some package is, how much better its approach is, etc., and
then finding out that the key part of its source isn't freely available.  I wish
it were presented more as a "hey, this can supplement the functionality
of PBM".  Source distribution doesn't seem to be a problem with many other
University-bred packages such as X11, mh, etc.

					Daniel

-- 
 dansmith@autodesk.com       daniel@world.std.com       dansmith@well.sf.ca.us
        Daniel Smith, Autodesk, Sausalito, California, (415) 332-2344 x 2580
Newsgroups: alt.graphics.pixutils