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Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

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Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

#511

Post by _snsh »

jessaustin wrote: post #508
_snsh wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

No one rational feels sorry for universities.

No one rational makes absolute comments on the internet.

Maybe university IT departments are staffed by people. Maybe even at the college board it's just some IT guys trying to keep a shitty platform working. Maybe they did the best they could working within their constraints and they expected the same from students who have a vested interest in getting their results submitted. Maybe this is just much ado about nothing.

Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

#512

Post by Wowfunhappy »

derefr wrote: post #298
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd posit that Apple ought to assume the worst (ie nothing but JPEG and PNG is supported) if no format is specified. That's how we've built most of the web, to ensure backwards compatibility and avoid these kinds of problems. That said, come on College Board. Fix your crap. What a stupid bug.

If no format is specified, then the presumption would be that the website wants a raw octet stream, and that adulterating it would be the last thing a client device should do, because it knows nothing about what the website's going to do to the result.

Okay, but the contents of that raw occlet stream will be a file in some format. The iPhone isn't like a traditional computer—the user picks an image from a library of images, and the type of image is abstracted away. Yes, it so happens that modern iPhones store images on disk as HEIC, but since this isn't user-visible it amounts to an implementation detail.

Since the user didn't specify a format, and the website didn't specify a format, the iPhone needs to guess something. Seems to me it should guess the format that's most likely to work, not the one only a tiny number of devices support.

Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

#513

Post by zodiac »

dragontamer wrote: post #81
oefrha wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tried a standard input tag with the proper accept attribute Selected a HEIC file from Photos in Safari, the selected image was automatically converted to JPEG. Ten bucks says College Board programmer(s) failed to do the most basic and standard filtering. Edit: Like a sibling comment said, the accept attribute actually isn't necessary; even PNG images (e.g. screenshots) from Photos are converted to JPEG automatically.…

> Ten bucks says College Board programmer(s) failed to do the most basic and standard filtering. Why is it a failure of the college board to put "accept="image/jpeg"", instead of iOS which failed to default to the more standardized jpeg format when HEIC was not specified? HEIC is a newer format which fewer systems support. iOS / Safari should default to JPEG in this case.

Imagine trying to upload a heic file to (say) Amazon s3 through their web UI and having it converted to JPEG.

Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

#514

Post by astura »

_bxg1 wrote: post #67
cybwraith wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think this was an engineering decision? These failing systems were probably contracted to a politically connected company that subcontracted to lowest bidder. Not only that, but that usually these systems were created with COBOL means that it was likely created a very long time ago and minimally updated as laws/requirements changed to be compliant but thats it. Thats not the fault of the engineer(s). A surge in t…

> These failing systems were probably contracted to a politically connected company that subcontracted to lowest bidder. And what if that government body established a policy that all contractors had to be certified engineers who hadn't lost their certification due to past negligence? Suddenly there's a much higher floor for "lowest bidder".

Good engineering can't undo bad management/process. Project management is what we really should work on to improve software quality

Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

#515

Post by nemothekid »

sixstringtheory wrote: post #228
bananabreakfast wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol "works" Regulate software and you will kill it.

One has to wonder how Salesforce ever got their huge glass building in the SF skyline, what with all the regulations preventing anything from working. Engineering is all about working within constraints. Too many people in software just want to do everything their way, oftentimes what they see as the easiest and quickest way, without worrying about how it affects other people.

Your salesforce example is so comically bad I don't know whether to laugh or to cry. The immense amount of regulation in the city makes it almost impossible for the now unicorn startups, such as Stripe, to find office space inside SF. Those companies were in the process of moving out of the city (or now, going full remote). That same regulation makes it incredibly difficult to build housing. Your intentions are noble, but your outcome is bizarre. Instead of asking "Why is Apple inventing formats", why not ask "Why didn't College Board test their platform on the largest mobile platform in the US?". HEIC has been around for 3 years and would have been the default on any updated phone as old as the iPhone 5S.

Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

#516

Post by gfxgirl »

ummonk wrote: post #427
_snsh wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This whole blame game is weird. Could the college board have handled this better or have a better upload mechanism? Sure. Could apple be more clear about the way they are storing and transferring photos? Sure, finder on my macbook actually does worse in handling .heic files than my windows 10 desktop unless I sync using photos. But if I got this right the upload page stated the accepted file formats, why should they…

Is this for comment real? Why should being tech savvy enough to jump through esoteric technical requirements be part of the test?

Ever see a student get scolded for not using a #2 pencil? Can't use a pen. Can't use a marker. Can't use a #9 pencil. Must be a a #2 pencil.

Ever fill out a government form that must be done in non erasable black or blue ink. A pencil is unacceptable. A red pen, green pen, purple pen is unacceptable. An erasable pen is also unacceptable.

Not saying users should have to know what a .JPG from an .HEIC but just saying there is plenty of precedent of technical requirements for things in real life. I've had forms rejected at the immigration office for using the wrong type of pen an I've been in classes where students didn't have the correct type of pencil and caused issues.

Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

#517

Post by kuyaz »

gbear605 wrote: post #399
pornel wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's built on patented codec (H.265). It's illegal to use it without a patent license, regardless whether it's a standard or not. Even if you wrote your own implementation, it would be illegal for you to use your own code. Technically HEIF is a good format — it's half the size of WebP. WebP is based on a much weaker codec that is two generations older. AVIF is a freely-licensed HEIF alternative.

My understanding (based on http://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/833-HEI... ) is that HEIC is not built on patents while HEVC is, so HEVC is problematic to use, but HEIC isn’t.

As it states in your source

> The HEIC holds the HEIF data that is compressed using HEVC by MPEG

Wrapping a HEVC file in a container does not automatically void any patents of the contained file. Otherwise, anyone can shove any patent encumbered file format in a ".zip" container (or any container/wrapper) and avoid any patent or licensing issues.

Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

#518

Post by Pxtl »

If any other vendor had decided to switch to a home-brew patent-encumbered format as the default format for image storage, we'd mock them relentlessly. But because Apple is the best at everything, somehow switching their entire software stack away from an accepted global standard instead of doing the hard work of getting widespread adoption first before going all-in gets a pass.

Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

#519

Post by smt88 »

zaroth wrote: post #505
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, what 99% of sites are doing is If you do that, Safari will convert the HEIC image to a JPEG automatically when you try to upload it. What they did instead was to poorly reinvent the accept header in Javascript as follows: { const split = file.name.split('.') const fileType = split[split.length-1].toLowerCase() const isAllowedExtension = extensions.includes(`.${fileType}`) }} /> (per https://news.ycombinator.com/i…

> If you do that, Safari will convert the HEIC image to a JPEG automatically when you try to upload it. That’s quite impressive actually and much more than I would expect from a browser’s control.

It's also not what a browser should do.

JPEG conversions will vary in quality and size. On some sites (e.g. a CMS), quality can be sacrified to stay within file size limits.

On other sites, like photo printing services, quality is much more important.

These may be unusual cases, but silent browser assumptions are still an overstep.

Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

#520

Post by willis936 »

kyle-rb wrote: post #410
azinman2 wrote: post #299

It’s amazing to me that so many are blaming Apple. Despite the fact that this site is all about new technology (so ironic!), uploading a photo from an iPhone isn’t exactly an edge case. They should have tested this, and apparently they did enough to send a tweet about it.. as if that’s enough. Clearly the college board dropped the ball in adequately informing people of their not-great workaround, instead of either sp…

> uploading a photo from an iPhone isn’t exactly an edge case From what I've heard in articles and other sources, uploading directly from the iPhone works fine. The issue is only when students try to upload an HEIF file from a computer, instead of directly from an iPhone, which requires: 1. The student has an iPhone, which they use to take a picture of their work. 2. The student chooses not to upload directly from th…

Mobile uploading is often broken or inconvenient. Phone to sync service (such as dropbox or icloud) to desktop with a full functioning browser to upload. This doesn’t seem like an edge case to me. I’d expect uploading directly from a phone to be an edge case. Most people don’t want to waste time filling out forms with a touchscreen when they have a mouse and keyboard handy.
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