Microsoft touting JPEG alternative

[Mr. Analog]

Microsoft shows off JPEG rival

Ok, so, like many others my first question is why!? TIFF, GIF, JPEG and PNG offer everything people need in graphics file formats, why throw another into the mix?

Problem: Glut of various image file formats.
Soloution: Add one more to the mix.

I've looked at their release notes AND the Wiki entry and I don't really see any advantage to it.

</. Tinfoil Hat Time>
If it was an open format it would be interesting, but it's not. So I'm thinking that much like Unisys and the GIF format, Microsoft will seep this format onto the web through popular tools like FrontPage then later when a bunch of tools show up that mangle it they'll loose the lawyers.
</. Tinfoil Hat Time>

It just doesn't make sense.

[Shayne]

Well, if microsoft and other browsers adopt everything that PNG can do we would need JPEG or whatever other photo compression scheme we need and we are good to go.  Actually, we also need a standard for vectored images.

[Mr. Analog]

Yeah, Vector image files are buried in proprietary land for now...

The only ones on my radar are:

• Windows Metafiles (EMF)
• CorelDraw (CDR)
• Hewlett-Packard Graphics Language (HGL)