On 22 Jul 1998 14:03:34 MDT, you said: Umm.. how do you get the compressed bits out of the .gif file so you can feed it to a converter? At *some* point, you need to take the compressed string of bits, and create an uncompressed string. You can do it in a gif-library, you can do it in a converter, you can do it any way you want. Facts are: 1) They're compressed in the .GIF file. 2) They're not compressed on the screen. 3) Unisys is saying you have to pay to get from (1) to (2). I thihk we have exactly 2 choices: A) Find a piece of software written by somebody who's paid Unisys to do the conversion for us. B) Write a dummy GIF-reader library, which on being handed a .GIF, reads in a canned .xpm and scales it to the dimensions in the .GIF header. I suggest a .xpm with a Unisys lawyer with his cranium stuck where the sunlight doesn't often reach, and a title line that says "Pay Unisys $0.05US for the real image". Of course, this should be taken with a grain of salt - I'm in a bad mood, since we just smoked a bunch of hardware in a thunderstorm 2 hours before it was to be moved onto a UPS. grumble <censored> grumble. Valdis Kletnieks Computer Systems Senior Engineer Virginia Tech