OK, you've sold me... I'd hate to inflict puzzling out that code,
or the weirdnesses of the .QWE format, on anyone:

http://www.projectpluto.com/qwe_fmt.zip

(about 8 KBytes) contains a description of the QWE format, plus
the source code I use to convert GIFs to QWEs. You may be able
to use it with only modest puzzling. Be warned that images vary
between "longitudes 0 to 360" to "longitudes -180 to +180", and
between north-up and south-up. There are some options in the
source code to allow for these peculiarities.

-- Bill