Hi, Folks.

I am pleased to announce the availability of JasPer version 1.700.x.
Numerous changes have been made to the software since the 1.600.0 release.
A few of the highlights are listed below.  This list is in no particular
order, and is not intended to be exhaustive.

1) The JasPer license has been revised in order to make it truly
open source in nature.  The new license is based on the popular MIT
license.  This change was made in order to address the needs of projects
that can only use truly open-source software.

2) A preliminary attempt at a color management subsystem has been added
to JasPer.  This will allow for more accurate color reproduction when
transcoding or rendering image data.  Some of the underlying color
management functionality makes use of the ICC color profile file
format.  Consequently, support for handling this file format is now
present in JasPer.  This support intelligently handles shared tags via
reference counting.  (Thanks to Scott Houchin <scott.houchin@kodak.com>
for providing some ICC profiles for use in JasPer, and for answering a
number of questions about the ICC color profile file format.)  Some sample
ICC profiles have been included with the JasPer distribution.

3) Previously, the configure process did not generate a configuration
header file.  Instead, all of the configure-related preprocessor defines
were hardwired into the makefiles.  Unfortunately, this approach has
the strong potential to cause problems when non-JasPer application
programs are built against the JasPer library (since such application
programs will often fail to specify the correct configure-related
preprocessor defines for JasPer).  In order to resolve this problem, the
configure-related preprocessor defines are now saved in a configuration
header file (which is always included by application programs).

4) Temporary files created with the jas_stream_tmpfile function
were not correctly removed upon file close under Microsoft Windows.
Apparently, the Microsoft Windows operating system will not allow a file
to be unlinked when it is open.  The problem has been solved by deferring
the unlink operation until the time of file close.  (Thank you to Rick
Bryan <rlbryan@pobox.com> for pointing out this bug and providing a
suggested fix.)

5) An option has been added to the JPEG encoder to allow a quality factor
to be specified.  (Thanks to Jason Fritts <jefritts@cse.wustl.edu>
for providing a suggested patch which I adopted with a few minor
modifications.)

6) A new make target has been added for RPM building.  This functionality
is experimental, and not officially supported.  Your mileage may vary.
Void where prohibited by law.  Batteries not included. :) (Thanks
to Alexander Karaivanov <adk@medical-insight.com> for providing the
necessary changes.)

7) The code now compiles with many fewer warnings on most platforms.
Previously, some unresolved type issues and missing type casts caused
numerous warnings to be generated by most compilers.  Also, some
prototypes were missing or broken.  The majority of these problems have
been fixed (either by using consistent types or adding type casts).
The source files jpc_enc.c and jpc_t1enc.c still need to be fixed,
however.  Hopefully, this will happen in the next release.

8) The JasPer software license has been made slightly less restrictive.
Now, JasPer can be used without the JPEG-2000 support included.  This had
always been the intention of the JasPer Contributors, but the original
wording failed to make clear that such use is legal.  Also, the software
may now be used for mission critical systems, provided that the user
accepts all liability for the use of the software.

9) The configure-based build process has been updated to use newer
versions of the GNU configure tools.

The new JasPer release is available from the JasPer Project Home Page
(i.e., http://www.ece.uvic.ca/~mdadams/jasper) and the JPEG web site
(i.e., http://www.jpeg.org/software).

Regards,
Michael

---
Michael Adams, Assistant Professor
Dept. of Elec. and Comp. Engineering, University of Victoria
P.O. Box 3055 STN CSC, Victoria, BC, V8W 3P6, CANADA
E-mail: mdadams@ece.uvic.ca, Web: www.ece.uvic.ca/~mdadams
