Date: Fri, 21 May 93 02:31:38 -0400
From: Glenn Brown <gbrown@raven.ctr.columbia.edu>
To: next-icon@gun.com
Subject: Automated Icon Compression!
Reply-To: gbrown@raven.ctr.columbia.edu (Glenn Brown: NextMail Prefered)

Here it is, what you've all been waiting for:
Automated Icon Compression!
And it's FREE!*
compress_tiff:¬(This executable is a sh script. Command-drag to Edit.app to display the script text.)
syntax: compress_tiff file [file ...]
Function: Attempts to reduce the size of each file if it is a tiff file by converting it to the LZW compressed tiff format.  Each file is change if and only if it is a valid tiff file and conversion reduces its size. Directories and non-tiff files are unchanged.
Why: So you can type "compress_tiff *" to compress all the files in a directory or "compress_tiff first.tiff second.tiff third.tiff" instead of using tiffutil many times.
Recommended installation location: any directory listed when you type 'echo $PATH' in a terminal window.
compress_tiffs_in_dir:¬(This executable is a sh script. Command-drag to Edit.app to display the script text.)
sytax: compress_tiffs_in_dir {file | directory} [{file | directory} ...]
Function: Attempts to reduce the size of each file if it is a tiff file by converting it to the LZW compressed tiff format.  Each file is change if and only if it is a valid tiff file and conversion reduces its size.  All .tiff files in each directory and recursively in its subdirectories are similarly compressed.
Why: So you can type "compress_tiffs_in_dir /LocalLibrary/Images" to compress all the tiffs there.  This utility should be extremely handy for the next-icon archive handlers and anyone compiling a CD-ROM*.
Recommended installation location: any directory listed when you type 'echo $PATH' in a terminal window.
Bugs: Requires that compress_tiff be installed somewhere in the user's path, preferably in the same directory as compress_tiffs_in_dir.

Legal Stuff:¬<-Gnu General Public License
compress_tiffs_in_dir (a NeXT TIFF file compression tool) Copyright ã 1992 Glenn Brown
compress_tiff (a NeXT TIFF file compression tool) Copyright ã 1992 Glenn Brown
	This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) any later version.
	This program is distributed WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warrenty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General Public License for more details.
	You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

* If you use this software or a modified version of this software to compress files for a commercial software distribution, the author would appreciate some sort of gift such as a copy of the software, although none is required.  

					Enjoy!
					--Glenn

Date: Fri, 21 May 93 15:33:16 -0400
From: Glenn Brown <gbrown@raven.ctr.columbia.edu>
To: nobody@ctr.columbia.edu
Subject: Re: Thoughts on face-tiff collections and information
Cc: next-icon@gun.com
Reply-To: gbrown@raven.ctr.columbia.edu (Glenn Brown: NextMail Prefered)

Garrance Drosehn wrote:
I was thinking it would be nice if we distributed icons in a different format, one
which would do a better job of keeping track of the information.

I like the format used by some X mailer: A mailer would try to find an icon for Lovstrand.EuroPARC.Xerox.COM.tiff by looking for:
lovstrand.tiff	in .../com/xerox/europarc 	and then
.dir.tiff	in .../com/xerox/europarc 	if that failed and then
lovstrand.tiff 	in .../com/xerox 	if that failed and then
.dir.tiff 	in .../com/xerox 	if that failed and then
lovstrand.tiff 	in .../com 	if that failed and then
.dir.tiff 	in .../com 	if that failed and then

This system lets  you specify default icons for a site (NeXT icon default for next.com, leech for microsoft.com, school or corperate logo for school.edu or company.com, etc.)  It also is a low-overhead way of specifying an icon for a person who uses a cluster of machines.  Finally, the folders would look pretty if you had lots of default icons.

Of course, the problem is that each folder takes up 1k on disc, but there should only be around 1 directory per icon on average.

A real system  would automatically retrieve icons somehow, datestamp the last time they were read, and flush icons nightly that haven't been looked at within some timeout period.  In the above system, automated retrieval is hard.  Flushing, however, is easy using cron(8) and find(1).

Date: Sat, 22 May 93 01:18:56 -0400
From: Glenn Brown <gbrown@raven.ctr.columbia.edu>
To: nobody@ctr.columbia.edu
Subject: Re: Automated Icon Compression!
Cc: next-icon@gun.com
Reply-To: gbrown@raven.ctr.columbia.edu (Glenn Brown: NextMail Prefered)

In my earlier post, I accidentally sent two copies of my script
compress_tiff instead of one copy of compress_tiff and one copy of
compress_tiffs_in_dir.  So...

¬<-compress_tiffs_in_dir

I already have a nifty quote after sending the above script
to the first person who caught my error:

"Thanks for the revised compresstiff script.  
You've just saved me >5MB on my HD!"
	--Stefano Pagiola

Thanks, Stefano, I'm glad I could help.

--Glenn