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Would djvu be a good alternative for PDF in IMSLP?

Posted: Fri Nov 14, 2008 7:51 pm
by kcleung
djvu is a document format optimized for scans and file size is a magnitude smaller than PDF.


I believe this would really help the IMSLP server workload and bandwidth (especially users without broadband)

With regards to accessibility, there are already many djvu readers for Windows and Mac, such as:

http://windjview.sourceforge.net/

If users don't have djvu installed, they can easily obtain a djvu reader, like how they download the acrobat reader.

So I really can't see why djvu is "deprecated" as described in the IMSLP site.

Finally, if we set up the server to convert all existing pdf files to djvu files, perhaps we can shrink our current 50GB repository to 10GB. This would be beneficial especially after the massive uploads from ripping the CDSM series

Posted: Fri Nov 14, 2008 9:33 pm
by vinteuil
IMSlP has deprecated several formats, for consistency. The goal is to make everything available to all, and PDFs are universally accepted by all major and minor OSs

Posted: Fri Nov 14, 2008 9:45 pm
by Yagan Kiely
If users don't have djvu installed, they can easily obtain a djvu reader, like how they download the acrobat reader.
Mac users need never download reader, and I am pretty sure it comes installed on windows computers.

Regardless of how I know everyone would like to help open source, PDF is the universal format. It would drive lots of people away. If I found a site with only this random file format that I have never heard of before (an overwhelming majority will not), I would not stay very long.

Posted: Sat Nov 15, 2008 6:51 am
by pml
Hi KCLeung,

Once again, I point you to: viewtopic.php?p=7874

Sorry, but the PC and Mac versions haven't reached version 1? The Mac version hasn't been updated for nearly three years and is still at version 0.1.2...

In short: no way, José.

Regards, Philip