Douglas Henderson recently brought up a subject of interest to me
(MMD 050106), as an arranger of vocal and orchestra music (and formerly
of piano rolls).

In one of my music notation programs (Encore), I can export a page
of sheet music (normally to be printed to hard copy) as an EPS file.
Other application programs can convert this format into other formats,
such as JPG, GIF, etc., for sending via the Internet to recipients who
can print hard copy in the usual way, for their own use.

I've found that the files sent in the GIF format are far smaller than
the equivalent JPG file.  Why?  I don't know.  But there seems to be no
loss in resolution.  Does it have to do with black-and-white vs. color?
Would this apply to scanned images, particularly when color is not
relevant?

I would welcome any discussion.

Bill Flynt
Dallas, Texas

 [ JPEG compression is intended primarily for continuous tone images,
 [ whereas GIF encoding is best for line drawings.  GIF means "Graphic
 [ Interchange Format".  If dimension information must be preserved
 [ then a newer non-proprietary encoder called PNG (for "Portable
 [ Network Graphics") gives equal performance.
 [
 [ Your music program generates nice clean line drawings and so
 [ GIF or PNG encoding works well, but scanned images of faded music
 [ manuscript might look better using JPEG compression.  -- Robbie