RE: graphics

["Fred Ridder" <docudoc -at- hotmail -dot- com>]

Actually, you lose the font outlines as soon as the graphic is handled
as a raster image. Raster images are nothing more nor less than
complex patterns of dots; the notion of lines or curves or font
outlines as entities has no meaning in the raster world.

When you're working with a vector drawing program, the font outline
information is lost as soon you save the drawing in a raster image
format like TIFF or GIF or PNG or BMP or JPEG. The only way to
preserve the font outlines is to save the drawing in a vector image
format like the application's native file format or a vector metafile
format like EPS, PDF, SVG, WMF, or EMF if you need the image to
be portable.

If you're talking about screen captures, the font outlines are lost
at the very beginning of the process by the code that renders the
screen display (whether that code is in the app or part of the OS).
Monitors are raster devices and only know about patterns of dots.

One further disadvantage of JPEG for line art or screen shots that
Joe didn't mention is the fact that its area-based compression
algorithm invariably produces artifacts near abrupt color transitions
(which pretty much defines text and most line art. Depending on
the compression setting, you'll see some amount of gray "smudginess"
surrounding the letters in a block of text and alongside lines in a
drawing. When you read a newspaper, you can always tell which
advertisers foolishly used a JPEG file to supply their logo or artwork.
It's simply the wrong format for that job.

My opinions only; I don't speak for Intel.
Fred Ridder
Intel
Parsippany, NJ