Several [stupid] questions

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Alexey Morozov <alex-telephony@alc.vell.nsc.ru> writes:
>  Someone told me that there is Tiff G4 format which is the best (in
> size) for faxes. What is it? Are converters from/to ordinary G3
> available? Are they GPLed or under similar license?

G4 is a fax compression algorithm, similar to but more space-efficient
than G3. However, it is only useful in a completely error-free
environment, because there is no way to resynchronize the decoder
after an error. It can be used for sending faxes over ISDN circuits,
although that application does not appear to be catching on in
practice (few people have the necessary terminal equipment, everyone
has G3 fax machines).

I would say the primary application of G4 is for local storage of
scanned text. Such files can also be transmitted with FTP, MIME,
etc.

G4 is one of many formats that can be packaged into TIFF. Free
software is available at ftp://ftp.sgi.com/graphics/tiff/
(get the latest libtiff release).

-- 
Frank Cringle, fdc@cliwe.ping.de
voice: (+49 2304) 467101; fax: 943357
.