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Graphics Software

At Last, PNG An ISO Standard Under Publication 43

Posted by timothy from the vectors-n-stuff dept.
Jeex writes "After its first draft back in '95, the Portable Network Graphics (PNG) format is finally, as of 2003-04-25, an ISO standard under publication. Links: ISO technical programme: JTC 1/SC 24, PNG Homepage."
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At Last, PNG An ISO Standard Under Publication More

At Last, PNG An ISO Standard Under Publication

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  • So, does that mean... (Score:4, Funny)

    by FroMan ( 111520 ) on Monday April 28, 2003 @01:17PM (#5825929) Homepage Journal
    MS will still not have proper PNG transparency in IE?

    Just now its ISO official?

  • Cheesy Website (Score:4, Funny)

    by BlakeGarretson ( 619688 ) on Monday April 28, 2003 @01:24PM (#5826003) Homepage
    The reason that it wasn't standardized before this is because nobody could take it serious with that cheesy website. ISO apparently thought PNG was made up by some teenager in his parents' basement.

  • Noobs (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by Profane Motherfucker ( 564659 )
    After leading the cry against the evils of patents and the overzealous attacks on end users by corporate lawyers, It's nice to see that Slashdot still uses GIFs.

    Fools.

  • And guess what? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 28, 2003 @01:40PM (#5826180)

    Yes, that's right, 8 years later, Internet Explorer still doesn't support PNG [petitiononline.com] properly!

  • I suppose this makes it easier for ISO to destandardize JPEG like was rumored previously. My question is, how long from PNG's ISO standardization and full acceptance by the community of browsers (e.g. Mozilla, Opera, IE, etc.) I live in the Unix environment, so I'm not aware of IE has given full transparency to transparent PNGs yet--that's why I'm asking.
    • Ummm, jpeg is lossy compression, gif and png are lossless. Jpeg is good for photo's, png for logos, line art, and other high detail work.
      • Gif and png are NOT lossless.
        They CAN be, in certain situations depending on the source and the options used, but they are deffinately not lossless by deffinition.

        • Re:GIF and JPEG . . . (Score:3, Informative)

          by fredrikj ( 629833 )
          PNG is lossless by definition. (GIF is also lossless, although only when the source image has 256 or less colors.)

          The definition of lossless is that if you take an uncompressed bitmap, compress it with the compression method, and then decompress it, you'll get a file that is identical to the source bitmap, bit by bit. PNG is based on a general-purpose compression method, IIRC the same one that's used in .zip files, so you can (!) use PNG to compress executable files or audio files or whatever, if you just
          • so you can (!) use PNG to compress executable files or audio files or whatever, if you just feed them into the encoder as raw images.

            That sounds really fun, but I can't fool any of my image programs into thinking, say, an EXE is a BMP by simply renaming them. Is there something special I need to do to get the program to believe the file is really a BMP? If that's not the case, do you know of any Windows software that this trick will work in?

            Thanks.

        • Uh...

          LZW is a lossless algorithm, and it's the only algorithm supported by GIF, so how could GIF be lossy?

        • Re:GIF and JPEG . . . (Score:4, Informative)

          by Webmonger ( 24302 ) on Monday April 28, 2003 @02:31PM (#5826768) Homepage
          GIF and PNG use lossless compression techniques. They are lossless. If you have a black-and-white image and you save it into GIF or PNG, you will get an identical image back when you load it.

          You're confusing format with interface (because you refer to options used, and those are an interface thing). GIF is lossless, but it can only represent images with 256 colours or less. (Black-and-white images meet that test.) It's impossible to save an image with more than 256 colours as a GIF, so many programs will convert it for you. That doesn't mean GIF is lossy. Just means that it has limitations. Save any 256-colour image, load it up, and you'll get exactly what you had before.
  • We have a perfectly fine standard for years...but now we get to *pay* for the privilege of getting ahold of the standard. Sigh.
  • I'm so glad the "do you pronounce GIF as giff or jiff" debate will soon be replaced by the "do you pronounce PNG as ping or p-n-g" debate. On another topic, I always enjoy the "how do you pronounce Linux, Lie-nux because Linus is not pronounced Linnus or as Linnux" argument, though that has mostly gone away now.

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