Hi, Folks.

I am pleased to announce the availability of the next release of JasPer,
version 1.200.  Numerous changes have been made to the software since the
last public release (i.e., version 1.000).  A few of the highlights are
listed below.  This list is in no particular order, and is not intended
to be exhaustive.

1) Some bugs in the JPEG-2000 encoder/decoder have been fixed:

    * A few bugs in the code related to packet ordering and the handling of
      POC marker segments have been fixed.

    * Some bugs related to coding pass termination have been fixed.

    * Some minor (but annoying) bugs in rate allocation have been fixed.
      One bug caused the achieved rate to be inaccurate for non-square
      images.  Another bug caused the achieved rate to be inaccurate
      when tiling is employed.

    * A bug in the encoder that caused invalid markers to occasionally
      appear in packet data has been fixed.

    * The decoder now handles large ROI shifts in a more graceful
      manner.

    * A minor decoder bug related to packet packed headers has been fixed.

    * A minor encoder bug related to signed component data has been fixed.

    * Some other enhancements were made to both the encoder and decoder
      to better facilitate handling of images with "unusual" geometries.

2) Support for a new experimental image file format, called MIF, has been
added.  This format does not conform to any standard, but it allows images
with very general image geometries to be used with JasPer.  This format
is much more flexible than the nonstandard PGX format supported by the
JPEG-2000 Verification Model software.  In fact, this image format
is capable of supporting image geometries that cannot even be handled by
the JPEG-2000 code stream syntax. :-)

3) A nonstandard extension has been added to the support for the PNM
format in order to facilitate the use of images with signed sample data.
This extension was added in such a way as to minimize interoperability
problems with other software.  For example, ImageMagick and xloadimage
can both successfully parse PNM files with this extension.  Of course,
the parts of the image with negative sample values do not look pretty
when viewed, but you cannot have everything. :-).

4) Some parts of the code have been cleaned, and comments added.  Some
(obsolete) dead code has been removed from various parts of the software.

The new JasPer release is available via the JasPer Project Home Page
(i.e., http://www.ece.ubc.ca/~mdadams/jasper).  At some point in the near
future, the JasPer software should become available from Image Power's
web site as well (i.e., http://www.imagepower.com).

Regards,
Michael

---
Michael Adams
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of British Columbia
2356 Main Mall, Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6T 1Z4
http://www.ece.ubc.ca/~mdadams
