>On the speed issue, 2.8 ignored the PNG you have as a background. 2.9 renders
>it, but slowly. I have added an update to the disney internal stream that
>gives a 40% improvement in this case. It will be available in the near
>future. Note: there may be other opportunities for speed improvements
>in PNG if anyone is interested in something to do.

Bob -

Eric Arseneau did some basic improvements to PNG performance internally
which I believe he released to the list back in the middle of September - I
think it bought us a doubling in performance.  I also have written, but not
tested completely, a plugin which accelerates much of the decoding of the
most common depth/compression combinations.  Unfortunately, I have yet to
merge my changes with Eric's, and I know we collide.  Some of our message
tallies indicate there may be a speed limit due to the implementation of
Squeak's zlib decompression, which is currently outside the scope of the
PNG reader.

If you have any other specific pointers to performance problems in PNG, I'd
like to take a look at them.  I'd also like to merge your changes in with
ours, so if you could see your way clear to forwarding them, I'd appreciate
it.  Our system is increasingly dependent upon PNG, and it's an identified
bottleneck.

Cheers -

-- Duane