cctech Digest, Vol 36, Issue 50

[Barry Watzman]

Re: 

     > But doesn't JPEG use lossy compression?

     >Yes.  And it blows thick industrial-waste chunks on any
     >graphics that are non-photographic.

     >Peace...  Sridhar

Bull

Take a look at the stuff I've scanned on Howard Harte's site, including
schematics, for example this one:

http://www.hartetechnologies.com/manuals/Cromemco/Cromemco%20Bytesaver%20II.
pdf

They are fine.  Keep in mind that almost every PDF file that was produced by
scanning is a JPEG internally.  Sure, there are lots of such files that are
crap, there are lots of bad scanners (referring to both the hardware and the
people that use them).  But there are also some that are excellent, superb,
indistinguishable from the original.  And since they are all JPEGs, JPEG can
do this with no discernable compromise IF YOU DON'T TRY TO OVER-COMPRESS.

[The schematic in the Bytesaver manual was almost unreadable in the original
printed format, extremely fine, extremely faint lines, but take a look, for
example, at the drawing on page 10 of the manual (page 12 of the PDF file).]