Dr. Bill C. Riemers

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DjVu: Document Image Compression

DjVu is the ultimate in document image compression.  Back in 1995, when working on my thesis, I noticed how some types of color images could be compressed many orders of magnitude more if the sharp edges like text where compressed bitonally.  Like many other people, I noted it as a curiosity and then shoved it aside to continue my current research.

One person, Yann Lecun, realized the significance of the observation.  DjVu was born thanks to the efforts of Leon Bottou, Yann LeCun, Patrick Haffner, Paul Howard, and Yoshua Bengio, with some contributions from Pascal Vincent, Patrice Simard, and Steven Pigeon.  My involvement with DjVu began in 1998 as lead developer, and continued even after DjVu was sold by AT&T Labs to LizardTech Inc.  Today, I still provide consulting services to LizardTech Inc. in their DjVu products.

Enough of my ramblings, how about some interesting DjVu links:

• LizardTech Inc. -- The current owners of DjVu.  They offer a variety of commercial products including compressors and free viewers.
• Java DjVu -- The open source java version of DjVu.  Features a free viewer, and applet.
• DjVuLibre -- The open source version of DjVu.  Features a free viewer, simple compressors, and other open source tools.  (Note:  Leon Bottou maintains this site.  I am listed as lead developer only because I originally registered the site on behalf of LizardTech Inc.)
• PlanetDjVu -- Hosted by Jim Riles and Associates, an official reseller of DjVu products, including many custom products.  Featured is a discussion board about DjVu and occasional news releases.
• opendjvu.webhost.ru -- Features the DjVuReader, written by Dmitriy Gar'kaev.  The most sophisticated DjVu viewer available.  Unfortunately, there is only a Russian version.
• Foxtrot Technologies Inc. -- Not much of a website, but it is the only software consulting company with the lead developer for DjVu.  The most recent innovations include DjVuXML, and JavaDjVu (a very small java applet which views DjVu including bookmarks, annotations, and hyperlinks).