Xref: utzoo news.groups:3666 comp.graphics:2446 comp.sys.ibm.pc:15422 comp.sys.mac:15877 Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!phri!dasys1!tneff From: tneff@dasys1.UUCP (Tom Neff) Newsgroups: news.groups,comp.graphics,comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.sys.mac Subject: RFC - comp.binaries.gif Message-ID: <4358@dasys1.UUCP> Date: 10 May 88 22:58:35 GMT Reply-To: tneff@dasys1.UUCP (Tom Neff) Followup-To: news.groups Lines: 51 Keywords: graphics gif new groups Summary: put GIF pictures in their own group? This is a request for COMMENT on creating a new group: comp.binaries.gif. This is NOT a request for votes - let's discuss it first. GIF stands for Graphics Interface Format, and was invented by the folks at CompuServe fairly recently as a storage format for color raster graphics images. It is designed to be portable across many different computer architectures. GIF files can be anywhere from a few K to half a megabyte in size (this is the range I have seen, anyway); the average seems to be about 50k bytes. The raster size and color palette is defined within each picture file. Implementations exist for most of the popular personal computers at this point; I really don't know what has been done for Suns et cetera, but in principle you can view GIF on any graphics display. Anyway, we are starting to see a fair volume of GIF files posted to the net, along with programs to view them. I am proposing that we create a newsgroup just for the picture (xxxx.gif) files themselves; here are my two main reasons: 1. Right now people tend to post GIF files to the .sys or .bin newsgroup for *their* brand of computer, be it Mac, Amiga or whatever. Thus people with other makes who COULD view them, don't see them because they unsubscribe to the foreign groups. We could ask everybody to crosspost like mad, but these files are large enough that the extra space consumed would be a bother to sysadmins. 2. Conversely, there are people who CAN'T view graphics files, who nonetheless have to pay to carry them right now because they are lumped in with unrelated -- but desired - material. Pictures are not the same as programs, so some comp.binaries moderators may dislike having them submitted; worse yet are the discussion groups like rec.startrek where X% of readers have nothing but VT100s! GIF is totally useless to them, and bound to remain so. The two big advantages, then, of comp.binaries.gif would be (a) it would allow GIF-capable users on ALL kinds of machines to share a common pool of pictures; and (b) it would insulate NON-GIF-capable sites from the comm burden of carrying pictures -- they could turn off the group at their discretion. I suppose if we created this group, then comp.binaries.gif.d would kind of have to happen to, because users are still learning how to view GIF from what I can see in the message base. Well this is longer than I intended, but those are the issues. Dunno if Gene would prefer your comments posted here or mailed to me, but I will "fer sure" summarize anything I do get in the mail. Thanks for listening. -- Tom Neff UUCP: ...!cmcl2!phri!dasys1!tneff "None of your toys CIS: 76556,2536 MCI: TNEFF will function..." GEnie: TOMNEFF BIX: are you kidding?