Disruptive Library Technology Jester

The lead article in the September/October issue of D-Lib Magazine release yesterday is on djatoka, the open source JPEG2000 Image Server from Los Alamos National Laboratory. The authors, Ryan Chute and Herbert Van de Sompel describe their effort in the article abstract:

The ISO-standardized JPEG 2000 image format has started to attract significant attention. Support for the format is emerging in major consumer applications, and the cultural heritage community seriously considers it a viable format for digital preservation. So far, only commercial image servers with JPEG 2000 support have been available. They come with significant license fees and typically provide the customers with limited extensibility capabilities. Here, we introduce djatoka, an open source JPEG 2000 image server with an attractive basic feature set, and extensibility under control of the community of implementers. We describe djatoka, and point at demonstrations that feature digitized images of marvelous historical manuscripts from the collections of the British Library and the University of Ghent. We also call upon the community to engage in further development of djatoka.

The discussion has died down on Jack Nack’s blog posting about the future of JPEG2000 support in Photoshop. Since I last updated my own commentary on the issue, there have been a few more comments, including one by Erich Kesse from the University of Florida. Jack has added a few follow-ups to comments left on his blog, including this one at the bottom of Erich’s comment:

[Thanks for the detailed feedback. I would note that regardless of what Adobe does with JPEG 2000, other developers can create JPEG 2000 reading/writing plug-ins for the app. --J.]