Encyclopedia of Graphics File Formats

Table of Contents

Preface
About This Book and the CD-ROM
Who Is the Book For?
How to Use the Book
Conventions Used in This Book
Terminology of Computer Graphics
About the File Format Specifications
About the Examples
About the Images
About the Software
Which Platforms?
Request for Comments
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1. Introduction
The Basics
Graphics Files
Graphics Data
Types of Graphics File Formats
Elements of a Graphics File
Converting Formats
Compressing Data
Chapter 2. Computer Graphics Basics
Pixels and Coordinates
Pixel Data and Palettes
Color
Overlays and Transparency
For Further Information
Chapter 3. Bitmap Files
How Bitmap Files Are Organized
Header
Examples of Bitmap Headers
Bitmap Data
Footer
Other Bitmap File Data Structures
Other Bitmap File Features
Pros and Cons of Bitmap File Formats
Chapter 4. Vector Files
Vector Versus Bitmap Files
What Is Vector Data?
Vector Files and Device Independence
Sources of Vector Format Files
How Vector Files Are Organized
Vector File Size Issues
Scaling Vector Files
Text in Vector Files
Pros and Cons of Vector Files
Chapter 5. Metafiles
Platform Independence?
How Metafiles Are Organized
Pros and Cons of Metafiles
Chapter 6. Platform Dependencies
Byte Order
File Size and Memory Limitations
Floating-point Formats
Bit Order
Filenames
For Further Information
Chapter 7. Format Conversion
Is It Really Possible?
Don't Do It if You Don't Need to ...
...But if You Do
Other Format Conversion Considerations
Chapter 8. Working With Graphics Files
Reading Graphics Data
Writing Graphics Data
Test Files
Designing Your Own Format
For Further Information
Chapter 9. Data Compression
Data Compression Terminology
Pixel Packing
Run-length Encoding (RLE)
Lempel-Ziv-Welch (LZW) Compression
CCITT (Huffman) Encoding
JPEG Compression
For Further Information About Data Compression
Chapter 10. Multimedia
Multimedia File Formats
Types of Data
For Further Information
Appendix A. Graphics Files and Resources on the Internet
Encoding of Graphics Files
Email
USENET News
Mailing Lists
FTP Archives
Archie
The World Wide Web (WWW)
Internet Graphics Resources
For Further Information
Appendix B. Graphics Files and Resources on the Commercial Services
CompuServe
America Online
Bulletin Board Systems
Appendix C. Installation and Setup
Using the CD-ROM
Installing GFF
Removing GFF
Which Browsers Can I Use?
Accessing Software on the CD-ROM
How Does GFF Work?
Customizing GFF
Glossary
Index
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z


Index | Glossary | Main | Formats | Software | Internet | The Book

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