DjVu and TIFF-FX Comparison
 A comparative review by James Rile, PlanetDjVu, Janurary 15, 2002
Perhaps you, like me, have been reading with interest all of the press releases and news concerning the emerging TIFF-FX format over the past year or two. And perhaps you also, like me, have failed to find on the web any actual examples of TIFF-FX (.tfx) files or a viewer for this file format. I am amazed by this! I was actually asked by a leading Imaging newsletter last year to compare DjVu to TIFF-FX and had to decline, saying "I cannot compare to something I cannot see".
Now I have finally found a few samples AND a viewer, and can now present you with a comparsion of TIFF-FX compression to DjVu compression.
TIFF-FX is a compressed document format developed by Xerox-PARC and branded as Silx. The TIFF-FX format is promoted by Scansoft, who has announced support for this format in future software product releases.
It is not my intent here to define TIFF-FX or to review the history of TIFF-FX, although a comprehensive and objective review is certainly needed. My intention is to show you a real comparsion, so let's get on with it!
First, you will need a viewer for the Silx/TIFF-FX files, and a desktop viewer for Windows, Linux or Solaris is available at: http://www.alphaave.com/download.php?tech=Silx&action=default.
If you don't care to download and install this desktop viewer from AlphaAVE, the sample documents presented can be viewed online with a Java viewer or ActiveX viewer as provided by Xerox-PARC at: http://www.parc.xerox.com/asd/projects/digipaper/.
Bottom Line: DjVu beats TIFF-FX "hands-down" for compression!
|
