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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

#531

Post by qubex »

mchan889 wrote: post #446
gbear605 wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know the IB system, but AP tests are equivalent to testing students on a first semester college class. In computer science in the US, that means basic data structures and simple algorithms, and it’s been that way for the last thirty five years at least.

I generally don't like to say people are making things up, however there is a lot of mythology around how much work IB students do. I've frequently seen IB students while I was in undergrad boasting about their level of proficiency, despite it seldom being supported.

If you think I’m boasting about something from more than two decades ago, that’s your problem, not mine.

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

#532

Post by technion »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #497
treesprite82 wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does have pretty much exactly that message. The corruption problems came from students seeing that only PNGs/JPGs were allowed, then trying to "convert" the file just by renaming it. What they're doing is the same as 99% of other sites that expect images. But it's probably fair to expect it to be even more streamlined (i.e: clear conversion instructions) given the circumstances of a time-limited exam.

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…

Just to give credit where it's due here, I don't think I've ever seen a client side form check upload sizes before. I've had many frustrations going through a form upload then refreshing to a page that says "your file was too big".

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

#533

Post by camillomiller »

Fun fact (and obscure feature): If you edit a pic on your iphone, even just slightly cropping it, the system saves it as a jpeg. This to me is a testament to 2 things: phone manufacturers have a problem with feature discovery; these students are lazy and unable to operate even the most basic Google search, which would have resulted in this or many other quick solutions to make the file compatible. Frankly? They better be smarter next time, instead of putting the burden on the developers (who actually baked in the right exception)

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

#534

Post by simonh »

Alupis wrote: post #357
simonh wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing starts common, you have to start somewhere, and it is an ISO standard format.

A file format, used by one company, isn't going to change the world. JPG and PNG are here to stay. Love it or hate it... they are the lowest common denominator for image formats.

>used by one company

Samsung have started changing over as well, it's the default on their latest phones.

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

#535

Post by mnky9800n »

braythwayt wrote: post #472

A lot of comments are arguing about whether the software should have been modified to accept the HEIC format. Let's go with "no" for the sake of argument. They probably can't accept an mp3 of me singing my answers, either. But! If I upload an HEIC, an mp3, a keynote file, or anything else unacceptable... Why doesn't the site provide an immediate "File format not accepted, please upload .gif, .jpg, or .png" message? A…

Just think, with this level of incompetence here, how much are these tests actually worth?

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

#536

Post by thaumasiotes »

root_axis wrote: post #376
CoolGuySteve wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even more strange is that when the file failed to parse after uploading, they just threw out the files instead of keeping them to analyze later. If they still had the uploads they could go back and convert them properly and apologize for the delay. It's just bad engineering all around. Even if there was a less glaringly obvious bug that caused parsing to fail, how would they debug that parsing bug without a sample fi…

I mean it's not that odd when you think about how software is typically written. The parsing logic probably threw an exception that was never handled and just pops everything uploaded off the stack by default.

I'm not sure how you typically write software, but I don't consider it typical for software that opens a file and encounters unexpected input to throw an exception and then delete the file.

If an exception is thrown and not caught, the software should stop doing anything.

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

#537

Post by dusted »

But.. it SAID on the page JPEG, and they uploaded some other random file.. The actual problem here is not that it does not handle the HEIC files, but that it does not return an error message detailing it so students can upload with a supported format.

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

#538

Post by thaumasiotes »

alasdair_ wrote: post #333
mfarris wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HEIC was developed by the Moving Picture Experts Group as an open standard. Apple was early in supporting the standard. Windows, Android, others have followed. More to come. When venting one's spleen, it's best to be at least a tiny bit correct.

>HEIC was developed by the Moving Picture Experts Group as an open standard. It’s hard to call something an “open standard” if anyone who wishes to use it needs to license patents from nokia. ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Image_File_F... under “licensing”)

I find it really surreal that this format is named "high efficiency image file format" when it makes no guarantees, no claims, and harbors no aspirations about efficiency. It's an encoding-agnostic container format!

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

#539

Post by lightgreen »

Thorrez wrote: post #529
zaroth wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing stopping the user from doing a conversion themselves if they want to (and know how, which is asking a lot). The server is saying it can't read the other file type, so the alternative is to fail.

There's a medium option: have an alert popup saying Convert the image to a format the site accepts (jpg)? [ ] Don't show this message again [OK] [Cancel]

Anecdotally, yesterday I accidentally learned that my relative clicks OK in any dialog window within 200ms without even attempt to read the message. So the alert you suggest would slightly help 1% of geeks and will annoy 99% of the users.

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

#540

Post by m0dest »

voisin wrote: post #404
tedunangst wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait. There's a way to get safari to upload HEIF without conversion? All my photos, which are HEIF on my phone, turn into jpeg when I upload them. I've been trying to get the original HEIF off for months.

Dropbox and OneDrive allow you to sync HEIF instead of JPEG.

Only native apps that explicitly opt-in to HEIC support.
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