Re: [Groff] Using pic/groff/gs to produce gif/jpeg

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Dave,

> Ah, using pnmraw instead of pnm makes everything 2-3 times faster!

Yes, the textual netpbm formats are handy but processing of large images
is quicker if the binary file format is used most of the time.

> That brings the pnm approach down to only twice the time of my final
> direct to jpeg approach which I guess I can live with. I know it's
> nice and flexi but it still seems overkill passing round these raw
> bitmaps from command to command.

Beware that JPEG isn't an ideal format for line diagram web images.
Having got Ghostscript to do the anti-aliasing and come up with perfect
pixel values you don't want JPEG coming up with ugly artifacts as part
of its lossy compression.  This is one of my pet peeves with images in
web `papers'.  A non-lossy format like PNG preserves gs's careful output
and most line diagrams compress very well without JPEG.

Cheers,


Ralph.