[minkzilla]

I am curious. I do not know much about image encoding and the such. What other types are there besides linear either row by row or column by column? It seems to me that those two are the only logical ways to map pixels.

[arnarbi]

E.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert_curve

[theresistor]

Z-order (aka Morton order) is widely used in GPU acceleration, as a means of converting 2D locality into 1D locality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-order_curve

[besselheim]

Any permutation could be used, but I suppose you'd want to use ones that form some sort of visually recognisable pattern. For example, a spiral emerging from the centre of the image, or all the even numbered pixels from a linear scan followed by all those indexed by an odd number.

[dylan604]

"a spiral emerging from the centre of the image"

Would this be middle-out compression?

[Sunset]

Polar coordinates?