[xep-support] FW: Enigma Inc. : Commercial Engine

[Nikolai Grigoriev]

Hi Gustaf,

> >Yep, TIFF is supported with some limitations caused by legal issues.
> 
> I assume you mean the LZW compression, for which UniSys has a patent. Since
> LZW is used in GIF and is quite popular in TIFF, it's unfortunate to see
> XEP being released without it. 

"Limitations" does not mean "total absence" :-). LZW patent restricts our 
ability to decode/encode images, but does not prohibit copying encoded 
LZW data. Since both PostScript and PDF support LZW, in many cases 
it is possible to transfer data from an image to the output file without 
decompression. In this way, we manage to support non-interlaced
GIFs and regular LZW TIFFs (strip-based, grayscale/RGB/CMYK, with 
interleaved color planes and no alpha channel, with or without differencing
predictor; AFAIK, this covers 99% of everyday TIFF usage). 

Unsupported are interlaced GIFs, and LZW TIFFs using special options 
(tiled, having separate color planes, or alpha channel in an extra sample). 

Except for this LZW issue, graphics handling in the forthcoming version
is more powerful than it was in 2.x, and far more efficient. In particular, 
we added support for CMYK TIFFs and JPEGs (for both PDF and 
PostScript), and transparency in GIF and PNG (PDF only).

> I wonder, since XEP has a price, wouldn't
> you be able to just include the extra cost for using LZW in your price,
> like many image editing programs do? If I understand this right, UniSys
> doesn't oppose that people use LZW, they just want their share for
> inventing it.

We have contacted Unisys for this purpose. The scheme that they 
are proposing (a license fee, plus an obligation for each client to 
obtain a special license from Unisys) does not fit into our current 
practices. In our opinion, supporting a few peculiar things does 
not justify the effort  of providing an additional license.

Best regards,
Nikolai Grigoriev
RenderX

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