DjVu is a computer file format designed primarily to store scanned images. It features advanced technologies such as image layer separation, progressive loading, arithmetic coding, and lossy compression for bitonal images, allowing for high quality, readable images to be stored in a minimum of space.
Progressive loading makes the format ideal for images served over the internet. DjVu has been promoted as an alternative to PDF, actually outperforming PDF on most scanned documents. This has led to its widespread use in math book piracy, as one can see on file sharing networks. Like PDF, DjVu can contain an OCRed text layer, making it easy to perform cut and paste operations.
The DjVu technology was originally developed by Yann Le Cun , Léon Bottou
Patrick Haffner and Paul G. Howard at AT&T Laboratories
in 1996. The ownership rights to the format have been transferred to different companies over the years, including AT&T and LizardTech . The original authors maintain a GPLed implementation named "DjVuLibre".
In 2002 the DjVu file format was chosen by the Internet archive as the format in which its Million Book Project provides scanned public domain books online (along with TIFF and PDF).
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