Clooz-L Archives

Archiver > Clooz > 2002-02 > 1012841725


From: "Kay Keating" <>
Subject: [Clooz] File Formats
Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2002 11:56:01 -0500
In-Reply-To: <125.b4d9750.299005fd@aol.com>


Dear Tom,

There is no need to apologize for bringing up the subject of file formats.
Discussions such as these are beneficial for everyone. This is not a
subject that is easily understood. I am no authority on it and always open
to other's opinions and ideas. There are pros and cons on all the formats,
depending on what you read, who you talk to and what program you're using.

Yes, large storage drives are available (I have two 20 gig hard drives, a
zip drive, and a CDRW ) but not everyone has this luxury. Also large files
(tiff or bmp) are slower to open and close, so depending on the speed of
your system and how large your database, you may get frustrated waiting for
a file to open. In Clooz, we are only saving a 1-inch square photo so that
the size of the file is probably inconsequential.

The same is not true for photos of documents. One of my *.jpg documents is
130k, but the *.tiff file of the same document is 566k or over 4x larger.
These eat up a lot of disk space real fast. I have hundreds of these
microfilm documents that I hope to enter in Clooz, so you can see I have to
consider the file size.

I use the "path to file" for photos of documents, and my graphics program
automatically opens to display the file. Each time I open a document file
regardless of whether or not I make changes, Clooz somehow or other forces
my graphic program to ask if I "want to save"; normally the graphic program
just closes the file unless I've made changes. So the possiblity of
multiple saves is very real unless I have to be very careful and say "NO" to
the question. Now it is possible to make the file a "read only" file that
can't be changed, and I may end up doing that. In fact, now that I think
about it that is what I'm going to do. (I just tried it and it works
perfectly ... one more problem solved.)

In addition to format, there is the question of resolution which opens up
another can of worms for another day.

KAY

<< Dear List Members,
My understanding of the *.jpg format is that it only loses data when it is
saved. You can open the file and close it without losing anything as long
as you don't "SAVE" it a second time.
KAY >>

Hi Kay,
I think you may be right but since we have big storage drives now I see no
point in saving space with jpeg files when TIFF are available and we know
that no matter how many times we open and save that they will not lose
information. In this case it may not matter at all if all that is done is
open the files. Some programs ask what compression you want with JPEG so you
know that you are losing some information no matter what compression you
choose. With text it may not matter if some information is lost. Sorry I
brought up the matter.
Tom Powell

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