My post was more aimed at the general issue of being able to adapt other people's maps to your own use, and the type of information that you need to know in order to do it. It was not intended to look at the advantages/disadvantages of any particular program or technique - by and large we would all be more likely to adapt and extend a map done in a program that we already possess. But the types of information needed do vary between the programs.
If someone produces a map and makes available the source files, the first stage is to know whether I have a program that can use them. If someone produced a map in Photoshop, and if I did not have Photoshop, I'd probably give up at that point because of the cost of buying the program. If it were Paint.net or the GIMP, then the financial cost would be nil and it would be whether there were sufficient incentive for me to download, install and try using a program I was not familiar with.
The next stage is the type of information that would be needed. It is hard to describe with the image editing programs because the originator might have have chosen to save or not save a multitude of intermediary stages, but all the remaining information will be available in the file and it would be easy to have a look and to see what can be done.
It is a different situation with the mapping programs because it is possible with them to have all the information used in the map. With DJ, you need the map, the images and the file format used. With DF, it is all contained within the map. I am not familiar enough with the other mapping programs to know what information would be needed with them.
As RobA says, I think DF is coded efficiently with regard to file size so that there is not a lot of redundant image storage within a map. OTOH, if there are ten maps all sharing the use of a lot of the same images, then the DJ files in total ought to be smaller because there will only be one copy of the images whereas each DF file will have a copy of every image used within it. The advantage of the DF system is that each map is independently portable. I'm not sure that either system is inherently superior - they just have different advantages/disadvantages. With CC2, the vector graphic system potentially makes the file sizes smaller, while CC3 is a hybrid.
One thing I would say about making DJ maps much more adaptable and portable is about the technique used for selecting art. The standard technique has art added direct from the file system into the map. This requires standardised structures for the user generated or gathered art such as the CSUAC in order for maps to be shared. An alternative technique would be to collect all the art that was going to be used in a map into the mimimum folder set allowed - 'Map A art' for instance - and that folder could then be made available with Map A to create a totally portable package. In practice, with the huge amounts of art that many of us have available, the technique of selecting art directly from a complex folder structure is probably not the most efficient technique anyway, although it seems to be common to most/all the mapping programs.
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