The Independent JPEG Group's JPEG software
==========================================
README for release 5alpha2 of 4-May-94
======================================
This archive contains an alpha-test release of the Independent JPEG Group's
free JPEG software. THIS CODE IS NOT INTENDED FOR WIDESPREAD USE. It has
some limitations and, no doubt, a few bugs. If you want something more
trustworthy, please see the latest official release (available as described
under ARCHIVE LOCATIONS, below).
This software is the work of Tom Lane, Philip Gladstone, Luis Ortiz, Lee
Crocker, George Phillips, Ge' Weijers, and other members of the Independent
JPEG Group.
DOCUMENTATION ROADMAP
=====================
Please read at least the files install.doc (installation instructions) and
usage.doc (usage instructions). Useful information can also be found in the
JPEG FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) article; see ARCHIVE LOCATIONS below to
find out where to obtain the FAQ article.
This file contains the following sections:
OVERVIEW General description of JPEG and the IJG software.
LEGAL ISSUES Copyright, lack of warranty, terms of distribution. (READ THIS)
REFERENCES Where to learn more about JPEG.
ARCHIVE LOCATIONS Where to find newer versions of this software.
RELATED SOFTWARE Other stuff you should get.
FILE FORMAT WARS Software *not* to get.
TO DO Plans for future IJG releases.
Other documentation files in the distribution are:
User documentation:
install.doc How to configure and install the IJG software.
usage.doc cjpeg/djpeg usage instructions.
cjpeg.1 Unix-style man page for cjpeg (same info as usage.doc).
djpeg.1 Unix-style man page for djpeg (same info as usage.doc).
change.log Version-to-version change highlights.
Programmer and internal documentation:
libjpeg.doc How to use the JPEG library in your own programs.
example.c Sample code for calling JPEG library.
structure.doc Overview of the JPEG library's internal structure.
filelist.doc Road map of IJG files.
coderules.doc Coding style rules. Please read if you contribute code to IJG.
If you want to understand how the JPEG code works, we suggest reading one or
more of the REFERENCES, then looking at the documentation files (in roughly
the order listed) before diving into the code.
OVERVIEW
========
This is an early test release of the rewritten IJG library, intended for the
hardy and adventurous only. Consider yourself warned.
There's still a good deal of missing functionality in this release (see
change.log for the current status). Still, the software is quite useful
within its limits, and it is noticeably faster than version 4.
----------
This archive contains C software to implement JPEG image compression and
decompression. JPEG (pronounced "jay-peg") is a standardized compression
method for full-color and gray-scale images. JPEG is intended for compressing
"real-world" scenes; cartoons and other non-realistic images are not its
strong suit. JPEG is lossy, meaning that the output image is not necessarily
identical to the input image. Hence you must not use JPEG if you have to have
identical output bits. However, on typical images of real-world scenes, very
good compression levels can be obtained with no visible change, and amazingly
high compression levels are possible if you can tolerate a low-quality image.
For more details, see the references, or just experiment with various
compression settings.
We provide a set of library routines for reading and writing JPEG image files,
plus two simple applications "cjpeg" and "djpeg", which use the library to
perform conversion between JPEG and some other popular image file formats.
The library is intended to be reused in other applications.
This software implements JPEG baseline and extended-sequential compression
processes. Provision is made for supporting all variants of these processes,
although some uncommon parameter settings aren't implemented yet. For legal
reasons, we are not distributing code for the arithmetic-coding process; see
LEGAL ISSUES. At present we have made no provision for supporting the
progressive, hierarchical, or lossless processes defined in the standard.
(Support for progressive mode may be offered in a future release.)
In order to support file conversion and viewing software, we have included
considerable functionality beyond the bare JPEG coding/decoding capability;
for example, the color quantization modules are not strictly part of JPEG
decoding, but they are essential for output to colormapped file formats or
colormapped displays. These extra functions can be compiled out of the
library if not required for a particular application.
The emphasis in designing this software has been on achieving portability and
flexibility, while also making it fast enough to be useful. In particular,
the software is not intended to be read as a tutorial on JPEG. (See the
REFERENCES section for introductory material.) While we hope that the entire
package will someday be industrial-strength code, much remains to be done in
performance tuning and in improving the capabilities of individual modules.
We welcome the use of this software as a component of commercial products.
No royalty is required, but we do ask for an acknowledgement in product
documentation, as described under LEGAL ISSUES.
LEGAL ISSUES
============
The authors make NO WARRANTY or representation, either express or implied,
with respect to this software, its quality, accuracy, merchantability, or
fitness for a particular purpose. This software is provided "AS IS", and you,
its user, assume the entire risk as to its quality and accuracy.
This software is copyright (C) 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, Thomas G. Lane.
All Rights Reserved except as specified below.
Permission is hereby granted to use, copy, modify, and distribute this
software (or portions thereof) for any purpose, without fee, subject to these
conditions:
(1) If any part of the source code for this software is distributed, then this
README file must be included, with this copyright and no-warranty notice
unaltered; and any additions, deletions, or changes to the original files
must be clearly indicated in accompanying documentation.
(2) If only executable code is distributed, then the accompanying
documentation must state that "this software is based in part on the work of
the Independent JPEG Group".
(3) Permission for use of this software is granted only if the user accepts
full responsibility for any undesirable consequences; the authors accept
NO LIABILITY for damages of any kind.
Permission is NOT granted for the use of any IJG author's name or company name
in advertising or publicity relating to this software or products derived from
it. This software may be referred to only as "the Independent JPEG Group's
software".
We specifically permit and encourage the use of this software as the basis of
commercial products, provided that all warranty or liability claims are
assumed by the product vendor.
ansi2knr.c is included in this distribution by permission of L. Peter Deutsch,
sole proprietor of its copyright holder, Aladdin Enterprises of Menlo Park, CA.
ansi2knr.c is NOT covered by the above copyright and conditions, but instead
by the usual distribution terms of the Free Software Foundation; principally,
that you must include source code if you redistribute it. (See the file
ansi2knr.c for full details.) However, since ansi2knr.c is not needed as part
of any program generated from the IJG code, this does not limit you more than
the foregoing paragraphs do.
The configuration script "configure" was produced by GNU Autoconf. Again,
the FSF copyright terms apply only to configure, not to the IJG code.
It appears that the arithmetic coding option of the JPEG spec is covered by
patents owned by IBM, AT&T, and Mitsubishi. Hence arithmetic coding cannot
legally be used without obtaining one or more licenses. For this reason,
support for arithmetic coding has been removed from the free JPEG software.
(Since arithmetic coding provides only a marginal gain over the unpatented
Huffman mode, it is unlikely that very many implementations will support it.)
So far as we are aware, there are no patent restrictions on the remaining
code.
We are required to state that
"The Graphics Interchange Format(c) is the Copyright property of
CompuServe Incorporated. GIF(sm) is a Service Mark property of
CompuServe Incorporated."
REFERENCES
==========
We highly recommend reading one or more of these references before trying to
understand the innards of any JPEG software.
The best short technical introduction to the JPEG compression algorithm is
Wallace, Gregory K. "The JPEG Still Picture Compression Standard",
Communications of the ACM, April 1991 (vol. 34 no. 4), pp. 30-44.
(Adjacent articles in that issue discuss MPEG motion picture compression,
applications of JPEG, and related topics.) If you don't have the CACM issue
handy, a PostScript file containing a revised version of the article is
available at ftp.uu.net, graphics/jpeg/wallace.ps.Z. The file (actually a
preprint for an article to appear in IEEE Trans. Consumer Electronics) omits
the sample images that appeared in CACM, but it includes corrections and some
added material. Note: the Wallace article is copyright ACM and IEEE, and it
may not be used for commercial purposes.
A somewhat less technical, more leisurely introduction to JPEG can be found in
"The Data Compression Book" by Mark Nelson, published by M&T Books (Redwood
City, CA), 1991, ISBN 1-55851-216-0. This book provides good explanations and
example C code for a multitude of compression methods including JPEG. It is
an excellent source if you are comfortable reading C code but don't know much
about data compression in general. The book's JPEG sample code is far from
industrial-strength, but when you are ready to look at a full implementation,
you've got one here...
The best full description of JPEG is the textbook "JPEG Still Image Data
Compression Standard" by William B. Pennebaker and Joan L. Mitchell, published
by Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1993, ISBN 0-442-01272-1. Price US$59.95, 638 pp.
The book includes the complete text of the ISO JPEG standards (DIS 10918-1
and draft DIS 10918-2). This is by far the most complete exposition of JPEG
in existence, and we highly recommend it.
The JPEG standard itself is not available electronically; you must order a
paper copy through ISO. (Unless you feel a need to own a certified official
copy, we recommend buying the Pennebaker and Mitchell book instead; it's much
cheaper and includes a great deal of useful explanatory material.) In the US,
copies of the standard may be ordered from ANSI Sales at (212) 642-4900, or
from Global Engineering Documents at (800) 854-7179. (Global will take credit
card orders, ANSI won't.) It's not cheap: as of 1992, ANSI was charging $95
for Part 1 and $47 for Part 2, plus 7% shipping/handling. The standard is
divided into two parts, Part 1 being the actual specification, while Part 2
covers compliance testing methods. Part 1 is titled "Digital Compression and
Coding of Continuous-tone Still Images, Part 1: Requirements and guidelines"
and has document number ISO/IEC IS 10918-1. As of late 1993, Part 2 is still
at Draft International Standard status. It is titled "Digital Compression and
Coding of Continuous-tone Still Images, Part 2: Compliance testing" and has
document number ISO/IEC DIS 10918-2. (The document number will change to
IS 10918-2 when final approval is obtained.) A Part 3, covering extensions,
is likely to appear in late 1994.
The JPEG standard does not specify all details of an interchangeable file
format. For the omitted details we follow the "JFIF" conventions, revision
1.02. A copy of the JFIF spec is available from:
Literature Department
C-Cube Microsystems, Inc.
1778 McCarthy Blvd.
Milpitas, CA 95035
phone (408) 944-6300, fax (408) 944-6314
A PostScript version of this document is available at ftp.uu.net, file
graphics/jpeg/jfif.ps.Z. It can also be obtained by e-mail from the C-Cube
mail server, netlib@c3.pla.ca.us. Send the message "send jfif_ps from jpeg"
to the server to obtain the JFIF document; send the message "help" if you have
trouble.
The TIFF 6.0 file format specification can be obtained by FTP from sgi.com
(192.48.153.1), file graphics/tiff/TIFF6.ps.Z; or you can order a printed copy
from Aldus Corp. at (206) 628-6593. It should be noted that the TIFF 6.0 spec
of 3-June-92 has a number of serious problems in its JPEG features. A
redesign effort is currently underway to correct these problems; it is
expected to result in a new, incompatible, spec. IJG intends to support the
corrected version of TIFF when the new spec is issued.
ARCHIVE LOCATIONS
=================
(This version is an alpha-test release and will not be publicly archived.
The following paragraphs refer to the most recent official release. Future
official releases will be archived in the same places, although file names
will change to include the proper version number.)
The "official" archive site for this software is ftp.uu.net (Internet address
192.48.96.9). The most recent released version can always be found there in
directory graphics/jpeg. This particular version will be archived as
graphics/jpeg/jpegsrc.v4.tar.Z. If you are on the Internet, you can retrieve
files from UUNET by standard anonymous FTP. If you don't have FTP access,
UUNET's archives are also available via UUCP; contact postmaster@uunet.uu.net
for information on retrieving files that way.
Numerous Internet sites maintain copies of the UUNET files; in particular,
you can probably find a copy at any site that archives comp.sources.misc
submissions. However, only ftp.uu.net is guaranteed to have the latest
official version.
You can also obtain this software from CompuServe, in the GRAPHSUPPORT forum
(GO GRAPHSUP); this version will be file jpsrc4.zip in library 15. Again,
CompuServe is not guaranteed to have the very latest version.
The JPEG FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) article is a useful source of
general information about JPEG. It is updated constantly and therefore
is not included in this distribution. The FAQ is posted every two weeks
to Usenet newsgroups comp.graphics, news.answers, and other groups. You
can always obtain the latest version from the news.answers archive at
rtfm.mit.edu (18.70.0.209). By FTP, fetch /pub/usenet/news.answers/jpeg-faq.
If you don't have FTP, send e-mail to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu with body
"send usenet/news.answers/jpeg-faq".
RELATED SOFTWARE
================
Numerous viewing and image manipulation programs now support JPEG. (Quite a
few of them use this library to do so.) The JPEG FAQ described above lists
some of the more popular free and shareware viewers, and tells where to obtain
them on Internet.
If you are on a Unix machine, we highly recommend Jef Poskanzer's free PBMPLUS
image software, which provides many useful operations on PPM-format image
files. In particular, it can convert PPM images to and from a wide range of
other formats. You can obtain this package by FTP from ftp.x.org
(contrib/pbmplus*.tar.Z) or ftp.ee.lbl.gov (pbmplus*.tar.Z). There is also a
newer update of this package called NETPBM, available from wuarchive.wustl.edu
under directory /graphics/graphics/packages/NetPBM/. Unfortunately
PBMPLUS/NETPBM is not nearly as portable as the IJG software is; you are
likely to have difficulty making it work on any non-Unix machine.
A different free JPEG implementation, written by the PVRG group at Stanford,
is available from havefun.stanford.edu in directory pub/jpeg. This program
is designed for research and experimentation rather than production use;
it is slower, harder to use, and less portable than the IJG code, but it
implements a larger subset of the JPEG standard. In particular, it supports
lossless JPEG.
FILE FORMAT WARS
================
Some JPEG programs produce files that are not compatible with our library.
The root of the problem is that the ISO JPEG committee failed to specify a
concrete file format. Some vendors "filled in the blanks" on their own,
creating proprietary formats that no one else could read. (For example, none
of the early commercial JPEG implementations for the Macintosh were able to
exchange compressed files.)
The file format we have adopted is called JFIF (see REFERENCES). This format
has been agreed to by a number of major commercial JPEG vendors, and it has
become the de facto standard. JFIF is a minimal or "low end" representation.
Work is also going forward to incorporate JPEG compression into the TIFF
standard, for use in "high end" applications that need to record a lot of
additional data about an image. We intend to support TIFF in the future.
We hope that these two formats will be sufficient and that other,
incompatible JPEG file formats will not proliferate.
Indeed, part of the reason for developing and releasing this free software is
to help force rapid convergence to de facto standards for JPEG file formats.
SUPPORT STANDARD, NON-PROPRIETARY FORMATS: demand JFIF or TIFF/JPEG!
TO DO
=====
Lots. This pre-release version is far from complete and no doubt has bugs in
what it does implement.
Please send bug reports, offers of help, etc. to jpeg-info@uunet.uu.net.
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