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A new PNG spec

programmax.net

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Re: A new PNG spec

#91

Post by encom »

HelloNurse wrote: post #80
encom wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea I'm mildly concerned about this as well. PNG's age is a feature, in a time where software development has gone to hell.

Without the new HDR and color profile handling, PNG was still useful but significantly obsolete. Display hardware has progressed over a few decades, raising the bar for image files.

>Display hardware has progressed

It has, but WWW is still de facto sRGB, and will be for a long time still. But again, I'm not strictly opposed to evolving PNG, I just hope they don't ruin it in the process, because that's usually what happens when something gets update for a modern audience. I'll be watching with mixed optimism and concern.

Re: A new PNG spec

#92

Post by Dwedit »

If you wanted better compression, it's called Lossless WEBP. Lossless WEBP is such a nice codec. Compared with Lossless JXL, it decompresses many times more quickly, and while JXL usually produces a smaller file, it doesn't always.

Lossless AVIF is not competitive.

However, lossless WEBP does not support indexed color images. If you need palettes, you're stuck with PNG for now.

Re: A new PNG spec

#93

Post by mrheosuper »

danielheath wrote: post #61
mrheosuper wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the parent said "changing the compression algorithm will break backwards compatibility", which i assume is something works now won't work in the future. The usb-c spec is intentionally trying to avoid that.

Today, I can save a PNG file off a random website and then open it. If PNG gets extended, it's entirely plausible that someone will view a PNG in their browser, save it, and then not be able to open the file they just saved. There are those who claim "backwards compatibility" doesn't cover "how you use it" - but roughly none of the people who now have to deal with broken software care about such semantic arguments. I…

which is what usb-c spec has been avoiding so far. Even in USB4 spec, there are a lot of mentioning the new spec should be compatible with TB3 devices.

USB-C spec is anything but breaking backward compatible.

Re: A new PNG spec

#94

Post by lelanthran »

mystifyingpoi wrote: post #58
yoz-y wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is not backward compatibility but labeling. A USB-C cable looks universal but isn’t. Some of them just charge, some do data, some do PD, some give you access to high speed. But there is no way to know. I believe the problem here is that you will have PNG images that “look” like you can open them but can’t.

Cable labeling could fix 99% of the issues with USB-C compat. The solution should never be blaming consumer for buying the wrong cable. Crappy two-wire charge-only cables are perfectly fine for something like a night desk lamp. Keep the poor cables, they are okay, just tell me if that's the case.

> Cable labeling could fix 99% of the issues with USB-C compat.

Labelling is a poor band-aid on the root problem - consumer cables which look identical and fit identically should work wherever they fit.

There should never have been a power-only spec for USB-C socket dimensions.

If a cable supports both power and data, it must fit in all sockets. If a cable supports only power it must not fit into a power and data socket. If a cable supports only data, it should not fit into a power and data socket.

It is possible to have designed the sockets under these constraints, with the caveat that they only go in one way. I feel that that would have been a better trade-off. Making them reversible means that you cannot have a design which enforces cable type.

Re: A new PNG spec

#95

Post by fc417fc802 »

danielheath wrote: post #61
mrheosuper wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the parent said "changing the compression algorithm will break backwards compatibility", which i assume is something works now won't work in the future. The usb-c spec is intentionally trying to avoid that.

Today, I can save a PNG file off a random website and then open it. If PNG gets extended, it's entirely plausible that someone will view a PNG in their browser, save it, and then not be able to open the file they just saved. There are those who claim "backwards compatibility" doesn't cover "how you use it" - but roughly none of the people who now have to deal with broken software care about such semantic arguments. I…

The alternative is the website operator who wants to save on bandwidth instead adopts JXL or WEBP or what have you and ... the end user with old software still can't open it.

It's a dichotomy. Either the provider accommodates users with older software or not. The file extension or internal headers don't change that reality.

Another example, new versions of PDF can adopt all the bells and whistles in the world but I will still be saving anything intended to be long lived as 1/a which means I don't get to use any of those features.

Re: A new PNG spec

#96

Post by layer8 »

encom wrote: post #71
layer8 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Browser support for JPEG XL is poor (basically only Safari I think), while the new PNG spec is already supported by all mainstream browsers.

It's poor, only because Google is using their stranglehold on browsers, to push their own WebP trash. That company can't get broken up soon enough.

Firefox also doesn’t support JPEG XL out of the box, and Chrome does support the new PNG, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Re: A new PNG spec

#97

Post by fc417fc802 »

layer8 wrote: post #44
riffraff wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was under the impression many gifs these days are actually served as soundless videos, as those basically compress better. Can animated PNG beat av1 or whatever?

APNG would be for lossless compression, and probably especially for animations without a constant frame rate. Similar to the original GIF format, with APNG you explicitly specify the duration of each individual frame, and you can also explicitly specify looping. This isn’t for video, it’s more for Flash-style animations, animated logos/icons [0], or UI screen recordings. [0] like for example these old Windows animati…

All valid points, however AV1 also supports lossless compression and is almost certainly going to win the file size competition against APNG every time.

https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Encode/AV1#Losslessencoding

Re: A new PNG spec

#98

Post by 7bit »

koito17 wrote: post #24
Lerc wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has fields to say what compression is used. Adding another compression form should be handled by existing software as recognizing it as a valid PNG that they can't decompress. The PNG format is specifically designed to allow software to read the parts they can understand and to leave the parts they cannot. Having an extensible format and electing never to extend it seems pointless.

> Having an extensible format and electing never to extend it seems pointless. This proves OP analogy regarding USB-C. Having PNG as some generic container for lossless bitmap compression means fragmentation in libraries, hardware support, etc. The reason being that if the container starts to support too many formats, implementations will start restricting to only the subsets the implementers care about. For instance…

I never once in 25 years encountered an issue with an mp4 Container that could Not be solved by installing either the divx or xvid codec. And I extensively used mp4's metatdat for music, even with esoteric Tags.

Not Sure what youre talking abouz.

Re: A new PNG spec

#99

Post by fc417fc802 »

riffraff wrote: post #12
albert_e wrote: post #5

So animated GIFs can be replaced by Animated PNGs with alpha blending with transparent backgrounds and lossless compression! Some nostalgia from 2000s websites can be revived and relived :) Curious if Animated SVGs are also a thing. I remember seeing some Javascript based SVG animations (it was a animated chatbot avatar) - but not sure if there is any standard framework.

I was under the impression many gifs these days are actually served as soundless videos, as those basically compress better. Can animated PNG beat av1 or whatever?

> many gifs these days are actually served as soundless videos

That's not really true. Some websites lie to you by putting .gif in the address bar but then serving a file of a different type. File extensions are merely a convention and an address isn't a file name to begin with so the browser doesn't care about this attempt at end user deception one way or the other.

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