Re: Workaround for compress patent?
> I wonder if it wouldn't be possible to convert gzip files to compress
> files without recompressing? I haven't seen the patent, but it's just
Umm, gzip and compress are very different algorithms; gzip was
*written* to avoid the patent (see also "yabba" done slightly before
it.)
What xpdf is probably doing is taking data in tiff or gif files that
uses LZW compression and adding the appropriate header bytes so that
the unix uncompress will recognize it and do the work, thus moving the
patent issue elsewhere. However, I was under the impression that the
reason gzip supported "uncompress" was because the patent covered
compression, not decompression... regardless of the more recent
unisys/CI$ claims.
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