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WebP is so great except it's not (2021)

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Re: WebP is so great except it's not (2021)

#131

Post by AlchemistCamp »

xmcqdpt2 wrote: post #72
j1elo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why to draw hairs between all 'ct' and 'st'? As a non-native speaker, is that some English weirdness that I have yet to learn about?

Ligatures are old fashioned in English but still very common in French. Some ligatures are actually mandatory (like the oe in cœur, heart) while others like st are pretty common in proper typefaces such as those used for novels. The author is probably French (Aurélien).

I've been writing almost exclusively in cursive for my entire life past age 8 and that font looks crazy to me. I learned both D'Nealian and Zaner-Bloser in different schools and have seen a lot of my grandmother's writing, which was semi-Spenserian.

The stroke just doesn't go in the right direction for those ligatures. My guess is that this font is based on a French (or maybe other latin) script.

Re: WebP is so great except it's not (2021)

#132

Post by bzzzt »

pembrook wrote: post #124

I've noticed the same issue with WebP and have gone back to JPG/PNG for most things (jpg for photos, png for UI-type images) I think the real problem is, like many of the commenters here, most people can't tell the difference because desktop monitors have been stuck in a deadzone of zero innovation for the last 10 years. I'm sure half the folks here are viewing his example images on a 2012-era HD 1920x1080 LCD, which…

I'm on a 27" 4K IPS screen here and have to squint/zoom in to see the difference the author is writing about. While it's nice some people really care for the best result I think most people aren't going to notice or care about it.

Re: WebP is so great except it's not (2021)

#133

Post by PaulHoule »

Latty wrote: post #7
ColonelPhantom wrote: post #3

It's such a shame Google decided to block adoption of JPEG XL: it's a strict improvement over classic JPEG (you can losslessly reencode JPEG to JXL and reduce the size, due to a better entropy coder in JXL!) and JXL has various other upgrades compared to 'classic' JPEG. In the meantime, let's hope AVIF or whatever manages to pick up the slack, and/or other browsers decide en masse to support JPEG XL anyway; that woul…

I must admit, I'm not sure why JPEG XL is viewed so favourably on HN, it's not something I know a ton about, but my understanding is that the big advantage of AVIF is that you can reuse hardware decoders built into devices for AV1 for the images. It being a strict improvement over JPEG is nice for the developers not having to go back to the source image for an upgrade, but that seems like a pretty small benefit that…

I have problems w/ AVIF that are like the ones that guy has with WebP. Please don’t post a link to the F1 car sample image because I think that image sucks (e.g. a reflection from a surface near the driver’s head gets replaced with a different but plausible reflection.)

Re: WebP is so great except it's not (2021)

#134

Post by drewcoo »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #25
j1elo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why to draw hairs between all 'ct' and 'st'? As a non-native speaker, is that some English weirdness that I have yet to learn about?

It's how English was written in the "olden times". At that time, little flairs (such as ligatures) were pretty common, and were very fanciful. Some simpler ligatures (like ff) survive today, but embellished ones (like ct) were toned down. It's just a stylistic choice to draw them one way or another, but it's jarring to see the fancier ones in "modern" texts because we're used to the simpler styles. Fun fact: The Germ…

> It's how English was written in the "olden times".

Exactly.

(skipping some minor details)

When we started printing instead of writing, we dumbed the letterset down into fewer mechanical pieces. Thus earlier printers in English had to use the letter 'f' for the discarded "long 's'" letter, back when the long 's' was still expected by readers.

And that dumbed-down letterset was the one that then made it to typewriters and then our keyboard today.

Re: WebP is so great except it's not (2021)

#135

Post by pembrook »

orbital-decay wrote: post #130
pembrook wrote: post #124

I've noticed the same issue with WebP and have gone back to JPG/PNG for most things (jpg for photos, png for UI-type images) I think the real problem is, like many of the commenters here, most people can't tell the difference because desktop monitors have been stuck in a deadzone of zero innovation for the last 10 years. I'm sure half the folks here are viewing his example images on a 2012-era HD 1920x1080 LCD, which…

>because desktop monitors have been stuck in a deadzone of zero innovation for the last 10 years. That's a weird thing to say unless the pixel density is your one and only measure. Regardless of that, the posterization should be perfectly visible on a 2012 FullHD monitor, or even a 1366x768 TN screen of a decade-old laptop. Most commenters here are probably viewing the pictures on a scale different from 1:1.

> That's a weird thing to say unless the pixel density is your one and only measure.

Is it though? We now have OLED TVs and OLED smartphones.

Where's our OLED PC monitors?

On every measure, if you care about colors/contrast/black+white levels/resolution/density, the average computer monitor has fallen far behind.

You can't even buy a smartphone that has a panel half as bad as most PC monitors on the market. And, at least in my area, you'd actually have to go to a lot of effort to find a non-4k TV.

Re: WebP is so great except it's not (2021)

#137

Post by unconed »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #48
laserbeam wrote: post #6

I know this is not constructive and I'm sorry, but I just can't read the text with those st and ct ligatures. It makes me feel like the author is trolling with them and I shouldn't take the text seriously. I know that's an exaggeration but that's what the design makes me feel.

> I'm sorry, but I just can't read the text with those st and ct ligatures. The whole font is bad. It looks pixilated and blurry, which can only be explained by that being the intended look. It's bizarre.

HN, where text looking bad on your machine means the designer intended for it to be unreadable. Isn't that more bizarre?

Re: WebP is so great except it's not (2021)

#138

Post by arp242 »

RheingoldRiver wrote: post #101
laserbeam wrote: post #6

I know this is not constructive and I'm sorry, but I just can't read the text with those st and ct ligatures. It makes me feel like the author is trolling with them and I shouldn't take the text seriously. I know that's an exaggeration but that's what the design makes me feel.

This site made me add my first-ever global Stylus sheet: * { font-variant-ligatures:unset!important; } I'm pretty infuriated that this is necessary, why would someone abuse readability so much for their own personal satisfaction about how "cool and unique" they are? Usability. Comes. First.

It's their website. They can do with it whatever the hell they want with it. They owe random people on HN exactly nothing. And you can also do whatever the hell you want on your website, because that's your website.

You also need to reset "font-feature-settings" by the way.

Re: WebP is so great except it's not (2021)

#139

Post by qwertox »

laserbeam wrote: post #6

I know this is not constructive and I'm sorry, but I just can't read the text with those st and ct ligatures. It makes me feel like the author is trolling with them and I shouldn't take the text seriously. I know that's an exaggeration but that's what the design makes me feel.

I even went so far as to check the html code of the page to find out what was going on there. It is annoying, almost snobbish.

Re: WebP is so great except it's not (2021)

#140

Post by account42 »

ColonelPhantom wrote: post #3

It's such a shame Google decided to block adoption of JPEG XL: it's a strict improvement over classic JPEG (you can losslessly reencode JPEG to JXL and reduce the size, due to a better entropy coder in JXL!) and JXL has various other upgrades compared to 'classic' JPEG. In the meantime, let's hope AVIF or whatever manages to pick up the slack, and/or other browsers decide en masse to support JPEG XL anyway; that woul…

Agreed. It's especially infuriating that their arguments against jxl would have applied to webp too (even more so) but for some reason that was pushed trough (as were other Google formats).
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