>In the case of 256 colours RLE will be a lot less efficient, but still
>workable (a 256 shade RLE bmp is still smaller than an uncompressed bmp,
>afaik).

I was told once that to RLE encode a colour image, it is best to break it up
into it's component colours of red, green & blue, and RLE encode those
seperatley, because the chance of having a constant run of 'off-white with a
touch of purple', is low, but the chance having a run of the red (or green
or blue) level of all the pixels the same is a lot higher.

- Keelan Lightfoot