Excerpts from mail: 15-Apr-92 Re: Implications of MIME fo.. Guido van
Rossum(_at_)cwi(_dot_)nl (1140)
Suppose that in a particular case, any loss of information is
absolutely intolerable. How do I know that an image I'm receiving
hasn't secretly been converted to JPEG and back to GIF by conspiring
MTAs? Is there a way for the sender to specify that this is not an
acceptable step (e.g. to say that he'd much rather fragment the data
himself if the MTA won't do that)?
This would suggest that, at a minimum, some sort of trace headers should
be included, no?
BTW, I think that the issue of convenience of GIF vs. JPEG for users
is a red herring -- soon enough, JPEG will be as widely supported as
GIF (it sells itself quite well through its lesser disk space
requirements). E.g., there is already a version of "xv" that
understands JPEG.
Well, JPEG really does have a lot more computational requirements -- xv
displays a GIF image an order of magnitude faster than a JPEG one, for
example. And your own point about the often-superior quality of GIF
images is well taken. I'm not convinced that GIF will go away
completely any time soon. But that's just one opinion... -- Nathaniel