Editing DjVu (section)

== History ==

The DjVu technology was originally developed by [[Yann LeCun]], [[Léon Bottou]], [[Patrick Haffner]], [[Paul G. Howard]], [[Patrice Simard]], and [[Yoshua Bengio]] at [[AT&T Labs]] from 1996 to 2001.<ref name="djvupaper" />

Prior to the standardization of [[PDF]] in 2008,<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.iso.org/standard/51502.html |title=ISO 32000-1:2008 – Document management – Portable document format – Part 1: PDF 1.7 |website=Iso.org |date=2008-07-01 |access-date=2010-02-21}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last=Orion |first=Egan |title=PDF 1.7 is approved as ISO 32000 |website=[[The Inquirer]] |publisher=[[Incisive Media]] |date=2007-12-05 |url=http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/12/05/pdf-approved-iso-32000 |access-date=2007-12-05 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071213004627/http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/12/05/pdf-approved-iso-32000 |archive-date=December 13, 2007}}</ref> DjVu was considered superior because it is an [[open file format]],{{cn|date=March 2025}} in contrast to the [[proprietary file format|proprietary]] nature of PDF at the time. The declared higher compression ratio (and thus smaller file size) and the claimed ease of converting large volumes of text into DjVu format were other arguments for DjVu's superiority over PDF in 2004. Independent technologist  [[Brewster Kahle]] in a 2004 talk on IT Conversations discussed the benefits of allowing easier access to DjVu files.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail400.html |author=Brewster Kahle |title=Universal Access to All Knowledge |format=Audio; Speech at 1h:31&nbsp;m:20s |publisher=Conversations Network |date=December 16, 2004}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.ecmconnection.com/doc/lizardtech-to-open-source-a-djvu-java-viewer-0001 |title=LizardTech To Open Source A DjVu Java Viewer |website=ECM Connection |date=7 December 2004 |access-date= 18 August 2017}}</ref>

The DjVu library distributed as part of the open-source package ''DjVuLibre'' has become the [[reference implementation]] for the DjVu format. DjVuLibre has been maintained and updated by the original developers of DjVu since 2002.<ref name="sourceforge.net">{{cite web |url=http://djvu.sourceforge.net/ |title=DjVuLibre: Open Source DjVu library and viewer |website=djvu.sourceforge.net}}</ref>

The DjVu file format specification has gone through a number of revisions, the most recent being from 2005.

{| class="wikitable sortable"
|+ Revision history
|-
! Version
! Release date
! Notes
|-
| {{Version|o|1–19}}{{Citation needed|date=January 2022}}
| 1996–1999
| Developmental versions by AT&T labs preceding the sale of the format to [[LizardTech]].
|-
| {{Version|o|Version 20}}<ref name="DjVu3Spec" /><!--keep the word ''version'' as it is part of the name-->
| April 1999
| DjVu version 3. DjVu changed from a single-page format to a multipage format.
|-
| {{Version|co|Version 21}}<ref name="DjVu3Spec" />
| September 1999
| Indirect storage format replaced. The searchable text layer was added.
|-
| {{Version|co|Version 22}}<ref name="DjVu3Spec" />
| April 2001
| Page orientation, color JB2
|-
| {{Version|o|Version 23}}<ref name="DjVu3Spec" />
| July 2002
| CID chunk
|-
| {{Version|o|Version 24}}<ref name="DjVu3Spec" />
| February 2003
| LTAnno chunk
|-
| {{Version|co|Version 25}}<ref name="DjVu3Spec" />
| May 2003
| NAVM chunk. Support for DjVu bookmarks (outlines) was added. Changes made by Versions 23 and 24 were made obsolete.
|-
| {{Version|c|Version 26}}<ref name="DjVu3Spec" />
| April 2005
| Text/line annotations
|-
| colspan="4" | <small>{{Version |l |show=111110}}</small>
|}

The primary usage of the DjVu format has been the electronic distribution of documents with a quality comparable to that of printed documents. As that niche is also the primary usage for PDF, it was inevitable that the two formats would become competitors. It should however be observed that the two formats approach the problem of delivering high resolution documents in very different ways: PDF primarily encodes graphics and text as [[vector graphics|vectorised]] data, whereas DjVu primarily encodes them as [[pixmap]] images. This means PDF places the burden of [[rendering (computer graphics)|rendering]] the document on the reader, whereas DjVu places that burden on the creator.

During a number of years, significantly overlapping with the period when DjVu was being developed, there were no PDF viewers for free operating systems—a particular stumbling block was the rendering of vectorised fonts, which are essential for combining small file size with high resolution in PDF. Since displaying DjVu was a simpler problem for which free software was available, there were suggestions that the [[free software movement]] should employ DjVu instead of PDF for distributing documentation; rendering for creating DjVu is in principle not much different from rendering for a device-specific printer driver, and DjVu can as a last resort be generated from scans of paper media. However, when [[FreeType]] 2.0 in 2000 began to provide rendering of all major vectorised font formats, that specific advantage of DjVu began to erode.

In the 2000s, with the growth of the [[World Wide Web]] and before widespread adoption of [[broadband]], DjVu was often adopted by [[digital library|digital libraries]] as their format of choice, thanks to its integration with software like [[Greenstone (software)|Greenstone]]<ref>{{cite web |url=http://wiki.greenstone.org/doku.php?id=nzdl:projects |title=nzdl:projects - Greenstone |website=Wiki.greenstone.org |access-date=7 December 2021}}</ref> and the [[Internet Archive]],<ref>{{cite web |url=https://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/hardinmd/2008/09/05/google-books-vs-djvu-in-internet-archive/ |title=Google Books vs DjVu in Internet Archive |website=Blog.libuiowa.edu |date=2018-09-05 |author=Eric Rumsey |access-date=2018-08-21 |archive-date=2018-08-22 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180822014943/https://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/hardinmd/2008/09/05/google-books-vs-djvu-in-internet-archive/ |url-status=dead }}</ref> browser plugins which allowed advanced online browsing, smaller file size for comparable quality of book scans and other image-heavy documents<ref>{{cite web |url=https://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/hardinmd/2008/09/10/djvu-again/ |title=DjVu again |date=2018-09-10 |author=Eric Rumsey |website=Blog.libuiowa.edu}}</ref> and support for embedding and searching full text from [[optical character recognition|OCR]].<ref>{{cite web |url=https://blog.archive.org/2004/12/09/new-book-collection-color-scans-djvu-some-pdf/ |title=New book collection: color scans, djvu, some pdf |format=PDF |website=Blog.archive.org |date=2004-12-09 |author=Jeff Kaplan}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |chapter=Efficient search in hidden text of large DjVu documents |date=2011-09-12 |author=Janusz S. Bień |title=Advanced Language Technologies for Digital Libraries |series=Lecture Notes in Computer Science |volume=6699 |pages=1–14 |doi=10.1007/978-3-642-23160-5_1 |isbn=978-3-642-23159-9 |s2cid=3095526 |url=http://bc.klf.uw.edu.pl/177/3/JSB_Alt4dl-2010u.pdf}}</ref>
Some features such as the thumbnail previews were later integrated in the Internet Archive's BookReader<ref>{{cite web |url=https://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/hardinmd/2010/10/19/internet-archives-bookreader-thumbnail-view/ |title=Internet Archive's BookReader Thumbnail View |date=2010-09-10 |author=Eric Rumsey |website=Blog.libuiowa.edu}}</ref> and DjVu browsing was deprecated in its favour as around 2015 some major browsers stopped supporting [[NPAPI]] and DjVu plugins with them.<ref name=ia2016>{{cite web |url=https://archive.org/post/1053214/djvu-files-for-new-uploads |date=2016-02-26 |title=DjVu files for new uploads |author1=[[Brewster Kahle]] |author2=Jeff Kaplan |website=Archive.org}}</ref>

''DjVu.js Viewer'' attempts to replace the missing browser plugins.{{cn|date=December 2024}}