Hail Svanni!

You wrote;
--- In norse_course@..., "Alfta Reginleif" <alfta_reginleif@...>

> http://www.midhnottsol.org/public/concise/gifs/test.gif
> It looks pretty good on my screen. I am hoping a few people can go

check it

> out to see if it looks good for everyone. If so then I'll start

working on

> converting them. The image I have there is 751 pixels wide. I

won't be

> able to get it done very quick but I'll work on switching them

gradully

> perhaps 10 pages each day until I get them done.

I took a look, and I think the size and color is much better now!
However, on my screen the edges of the letters now look
a bit grey. Perhaps that is indeed the best way to do it,
but to me it looks like the reduction algorithm has used
some kind of filter that averages between neighboring
pixel values. That would indeed be the best kind of
size-reduction algorithm for photos or continuous images.
But for images of text, I think one should use an algorithm
that retains the abruptness of the edges, i.e. the resulting
image should not have narrow grey zones at the edges of the
letters.

But maybe I am wrong, and your image is in fact the optimal.
For example the "true type" approach (I think it was "true type")
also has letters that bypass the "jagged edge effect" by a
process of averaging out by means of some kind of stepwise
grey tones. I am no longer sure if I saw the same thing
in some of the Adobe Acrobat text files. And if the experts
at Adobe say that is a good way of doing it, then that must
mean that their research has shown that it is a good solution.
Nevertheless, my personal taste seems to be saying that sharp
edges are better. I noted that the first images I looked at
were pixel oriented, that is, the pixels were clearly either
black or white. Have you tried to reduce by dividing the
resolution by two? (I mean by exactly two)

At any rate, the reduced images are definitely better to work
with than the original ones.

One important parameter is however the monitor resolution.
I think I should therefore state that my present resolution
is 768 by 1024 pixels. And although I can easily run higher
resolutions on the 18 inch monitor that I have (with a Matrox
graphics card), this is the one I prefer, since normal text
then has a reasonable size for comfortable stressless reading.

If your images are now, as you state, 751 pixels wide,
they should easily be able to fit onto screens that
run resolutions that I think are now pretty much standard.
When I looked, the image did not cover the whole screen width,
and although I did not check yet, 751 out of an available 1024
pixels is a good description of the display width that I saw
when I looked a few minutes ago. Oh, yes, I also use 32-bit
"true color", which is also important information in this connection.

Best regards
Keth