This template was considered for
deletion on 2007 July 4. The result of the discussion was "to keep".
Purpose
What is the envisioned purpose of this tag? Are we going to tag every non-animated GIF on Wikipedia with this thing? —
Bkell07:51, 21 May 2006 (UTC)reply
Lot's of transparent GIFs won't show up as transparent in Internet Explorer if they are PNGs. Even if it's less efficient, we shouldn't discourage GIFs for icons and such.--
ragesoss15:50, 21 May 2006 (UTC)reply
The purpose of this tag is for when an image suffers from bad GIF compression, due to factors including the limit for 256 colours. If you want to discuss this further, please contact me on my talk page -
bdudeTalk07:43, 3 June 2006 (UTC)reply
Issues with
Internet Explorer rendering rendering PNG files when converted from GIF is irrelevant, because:
There are no translucent pixels in the GIF
The PNG can be put in color type 3, which uses a pallet, like a gif.
Issues with PNGs are because transparency in color other colors types like 6 (truecolor) is not properly implemented in IE 5 or 6.
If the above 2 conditions are done, IE will render the PNG identically to the GIF.
But, again, this isn't an issue in converting a non-animinated GIF, if it is done correctly. In fact, if done in incorrectly, not only will the image not have proper transprency, it will often be larger than the GIF. Conversions should be done with someone who can guarentee it has been converted to an 8-bit (or less) palletted/indexed PNG.
Kevin_b_er04:37, 4 June 2006 (UTC)reply
I noticed you added the {{
badGIF}} template to
Image:KOOP.gif. What were your reasons for doing so? This is a new template, and I'm still trying to figure out what it should be used for. —
Bkell (
talk)
09:46, 29 May 2006 (UTC)reply
Image:KOOP.gif is a GIF, which I was always told wasn't for photographs, which that seems to be... (Granted, if it turns out that it was gotten from a website as a GIF, there's not much that can be done about it.) (Also, the template doesn't say anything about converting to a JPEG, argh)
68.39.174.23821:45, 29 May 2006 (UTC)reply
It's a black and white image and doesn't use anything that GIF is required for, so JPG or PNG would both be more appropriate for the picture. ~Kylu (
u|
t) 22:57, 29 May 2006 (UTC)reply
In all honesty though, it's not used anywhere and there's a much better pic of him on the articel. It could probably just be deleted...
68.39.174.23822:58, 29 May 2006 (UTC)reply
Mostly I'm trying to figure out whether the intended purpose of this template is to mark all non-animated GIFs on Wikipedia. After all,
Wikipedia:Preparing images for upload says right at the top that non-animated GIFs should never be used, so if we really wanted to do things right we would convert all non-animated GIFs to PNGs. But it would be way too much work to tag the tens of thousands of non-animated GIFs, even for an idealistically-motivated guy like me. —
Bkell (
talk)
03:08, 30 May 2006 (UTC)reply
Do we know any bot-writer types that could automate the process? I figure, have it download all the GIFs, auto-convert them with a commandline tool made for the purpose, make a large gallery sheet so the bot owner can check to make sure there are no errors, then upload them all and change existing links to the new filename. I certainly wouldn't want to be the person to do download, conversion, reupload, and reference-renames by hand. o.o ~Kylu (
u|
t) 03:13, 30 May 2006 (UTC)reply
The problem I have with that idea is that until Wikipedia has a better method for replacing images with versions in another format, we will lose the entire file history when a new PNG version is uploaded, which is unacceptable, especially if a bot is doing it en masse. To take one example, many GIFs on Wikipedia have dubious copyright claims (because GIFs are no different from other image types), and if we replaced all of them and lost all their histories we would have no way to contact the original uploader and possibly clarify the licensing.
I have created a bot that is similar to what you asked for. It's called the
PNG crusade bot and it is actively working under my direction to convert the images marked as ShouldBePNG and BadGIF. Unfortunately, though, it uses the Microsoft compressor which is not as good as the GIMP's compressor. This means that images this bot can't make smaller due to its inferior compressor are left alone to be manually converted using the GIMP's compressor. ---
Remember the dot01:33, 7 January 2007 (UTC)reply
BADGIF BS
This template is annoying - why place it on a 3-color 1kb gif diagram? Certainly PNG is inferior on size, and JPG is inferior quality. Only SVG makes sense but WHO IS GOING TO automate converting bitmap diagrams into vectors? NO ONE. Therefore until I can make my own SVG images, it's silly to complain with tags like this.
Tom Ruen (
talk)
19:24, 21 December 2007 (UTC)reply
Seconded. If you're using a bitmap editor to make diagrams like
Image:4-cube column graph.gif, you're going about it the wrong way. Things like this are very easily produced in drawing programs as
XFig and
Inkscape, by specialist mathematical languages, or even by writing in a vector language (
fig,
SVG,
PostScript) manually. Using vector graphics means the images are much easier for other people to edit. For example, if you had produced all your images as SVG files, I could download them all and use a simple shell script to adjust the line thickness and node colours. As they are now, I'd have to open each bitmap manually and change it. —
Psychonaut (
talk)
22:44, 22 December 2007 (UTC)reply
No editors - it's a screen dump from a program! I could export a file with vector information but waste too much time trying to deconstruct SVG formats from examples which never work and I have to upload by trial and error to see what I've created.
Tom Ruen (
talk)
04:55, 24 December 2007 (UTC)reply
ChrisRuvolo and Psychonaut: You can't just expect people to learn how to use vector drawing software to upload their images as SVGs. Bitmaps are a lot easier to create, and there is much more support for them.
Tom Ruen: There are cases where a GIF can be smaller than PNG, particularly in very small files, where PNG's slightly larger file size overhead becomes significant, but usually PNG allows better compression than GIF. Particularly if a PNG optimiser such as PNGOUT or OptiPNG is used. Additionally, using a tool like TweakPNG, it is possible to go into a PNG and modify things like the colour palette, without having to load and resave it.
PNGOUT, and the latest version of
OptiPNG, can automatically convert from gif to png. Here are my results:
optipng: 1245 bytes
pngout: 1142 bytes
PNGOUT is slower than optipng, but almost always gives the best results.
By the way, I probably should have mentioned that, with the more complex images, such as
Image:10-cube_column_graph.gif, there would actually be real benefits in remaking in SVG form. There are lots of overlapping lines on the image, and it's difficult to follow. It would be more useful to have those lines as vectors, so the image can be zoomed in to get clearer detail.
CountingPine (
talk)
13:26, 28 December 2007 (UTC)reply
Interesting results. I use PolyView 4.36[1] for generating PNG from screen captures. I'd use a vector format if it was SIMPLE, like
Obj. It would be nice to have a simple line-drawing script format maybe like something
BASIC-ish: view 100,100; pencolor red; line 10,10 to 90,90; brushcolor blue; Circle 50,50,5. That would be easy to generate from my program. Or like an
RPNPostScript format?
Tom Ruen (
talk)
20:38, 28 December 2007 (UTC)reply
No one is required to learn to use vector graphics software to upload an image. Note that the raster images are not being deleted. However, vector graphics do provide advantages over rasters for collaboration. That is one of the reasons why SVG is preferred. No immediate action is required, but the template indicates that an improvement is requested. --
ChrisRuvolo (
t)
19:47, 26 December 2007 (UTC)reply
I just find it annoying, like someone running around being critical of things that will NEVER be magically fixed, NOR necesarily should be. Those who CARE about specific images are those most interesting in upgrading, and if no one who cares has the capability, it's wasted effort to tag them, and wasted negative energy on Wikipedia to things that are good enough.
Tom Ruen (
talk)
22:24, 26 December 2007 (UTC)reply
In case anyone is reading this now, this hasn't been true for a while. PNG scaling was fixed long ago. It was still true for black-and-white PNGs, but even that has been fixed now. There really is no reason to use GIF for static images (except possibly really small ones, where GIF is smaller.) —
trlkly00:28, 20 March 2014 (UTC)reply
Even 2 years later, not all web browsers support APNGs. Internet Explorer 8, the most popular web browser at the moment, does not support them. This is still a bad idea. —
trlkly08:21, 16 September 2011 (UTC)reply
This template was considered for
deletion on 2007 July 4. The result of the discussion was "to keep".
Purpose
What is the envisioned purpose of this tag? Are we going to tag every non-animated GIF on Wikipedia with this thing? —
Bkell07:51, 21 May 2006 (UTC)reply
Lot's of transparent GIFs won't show up as transparent in Internet Explorer if they are PNGs. Even if it's less efficient, we shouldn't discourage GIFs for icons and such.--
ragesoss15:50, 21 May 2006 (UTC)reply
The purpose of this tag is for when an image suffers from bad GIF compression, due to factors including the limit for 256 colours. If you want to discuss this further, please contact me on my talk page -
bdudeTalk07:43, 3 June 2006 (UTC)reply
Issues with
Internet Explorer rendering rendering PNG files when converted from GIF is irrelevant, because:
There are no translucent pixels in the GIF
The PNG can be put in color type 3, which uses a pallet, like a gif.
Issues with PNGs are because transparency in color other colors types like 6 (truecolor) is not properly implemented in IE 5 or 6.
If the above 2 conditions are done, IE will render the PNG identically to the GIF.
But, again, this isn't an issue in converting a non-animinated GIF, if it is done correctly. In fact, if done in incorrectly, not only will the image not have proper transprency, it will often be larger than the GIF. Conversions should be done with someone who can guarentee it has been converted to an 8-bit (or less) palletted/indexed PNG.
Kevin_b_er04:37, 4 June 2006 (UTC)reply
I noticed you added the {{
badGIF}} template to
Image:KOOP.gif. What were your reasons for doing so? This is a new template, and I'm still trying to figure out what it should be used for. —
Bkell (
talk)
09:46, 29 May 2006 (UTC)reply
Image:KOOP.gif is a GIF, which I was always told wasn't for photographs, which that seems to be... (Granted, if it turns out that it was gotten from a website as a GIF, there's not much that can be done about it.) (Also, the template doesn't say anything about converting to a JPEG, argh)
68.39.174.23821:45, 29 May 2006 (UTC)reply
It's a black and white image and doesn't use anything that GIF is required for, so JPG or PNG would both be more appropriate for the picture. ~Kylu (
u|
t) 22:57, 29 May 2006 (UTC)reply
In all honesty though, it's not used anywhere and there's a much better pic of him on the articel. It could probably just be deleted...
68.39.174.23822:58, 29 May 2006 (UTC)reply
Mostly I'm trying to figure out whether the intended purpose of this template is to mark all non-animated GIFs on Wikipedia. After all,
Wikipedia:Preparing images for upload says right at the top that non-animated GIFs should never be used, so if we really wanted to do things right we would convert all non-animated GIFs to PNGs. But it would be way too much work to tag the tens of thousands of non-animated GIFs, even for an idealistically-motivated guy like me. —
Bkell (
talk)
03:08, 30 May 2006 (UTC)reply
Do we know any bot-writer types that could automate the process? I figure, have it download all the GIFs, auto-convert them with a commandline tool made for the purpose, make a large gallery sheet so the bot owner can check to make sure there are no errors, then upload them all and change existing links to the new filename. I certainly wouldn't want to be the person to do download, conversion, reupload, and reference-renames by hand. o.o ~Kylu (
u|
t) 03:13, 30 May 2006 (UTC)reply
The problem I have with that idea is that until Wikipedia has a better method for replacing images with versions in another format, we will lose the entire file history when a new PNG version is uploaded, which is unacceptable, especially if a bot is doing it en masse. To take one example, many GIFs on Wikipedia have dubious copyright claims (because GIFs are no different from other image types), and if we replaced all of them and lost all their histories we would have no way to contact the original uploader and possibly clarify the licensing.
I have created a bot that is similar to what you asked for. It's called the
PNG crusade bot and it is actively working under my direction to convert the images marked as ShouldBePNG and BadGIF. Unfortunately, though, it uses the Microsoft compressor which is not as good as the GIMP's compressor. This means that images this bot can't make smaller due to its inferior compressor are left alone to be manually converted using the GIMP's compressor. ---
Remember the dot01:33, 7 January 2007 (UTC)reply
BADGIF BS
This template is annoying - why place it on a 3-color 1kb gif diagram? Certainly PNG is inferior on size, and JPG is inferior quality. Only SVG makes sense but WHO IS GOING TO automate converting bitmap diagrams into vectors? NO ONE. Therefore until I can make my own SVG images, it's silly to complain with tags like this.
Tom Ruen (
talk)
19:24, 21 December 2007 (UTC)reply
Seconded. If you're using a bitmap editor to make diagrams like
Image:4-cube column graph.gif, you're going about it the wrong way. Things like this are very easily produced in drawing programs as
XFig and
Inkscape, by specialist mathematical languages, or even by writing in a vector language (
fig,
SVG,
PostScript) manually. Using vector graphics means the images are much easier for other people to edit. For example, if you had produced all your images as SVG files, I could download them all and use a simple shell script to adjust the line thickness and node colours. As they are now, I'd have to open each bitmap manually and change it. —
Psychonaut (
talk)
22:44, 22 December 2007 (UTC)reply
No editors - it's a screen dump from a program! I could export a file with vector information but waste too much time trying to deconstruct SVG formats from examples which never work and I have to upload by trial and error to see what I've created.
Tom Ruen (
talk)
04:55, 24 December 2007 (UTC)reply
ChrisRuvolo and Psychonaut: You can't just expect people to learn how to use vector drawing software to upload their images as SVGs. Bitmaps are a lot easier to create, and there is much more support for them.
Tom Ruen: There are cases where a GIF can be smaller than PNG, particularly in very small files, where PNG's slightly larger file size overhead becomes significant, but usually PNG allows better compression than GIF. Particularly if a PNG optimiser such as PNGOUT or OptiPNG is used. Additionally, using a tool like TweakPNG, it is possible to go into a PNG and modify things like the colour palette, without having to load and resave it.
PNGOUT, and the latest version of
OptiPNG, can automatically convert from gif to png. Here are my results:
optipng: 1245 bytes
pngout: 1142 bytes
PNGOUT is slower than optipng, but almost always gives the best results.
By the way, I probably should have mentioned that, with the more complex images, such as
Image:10-cube_column_graph.gif, there would actually be real benefits in remaking in SVG form. There are lots of overlapping lines on the image, and it's difficult to follow. It would be more useful to have those lines as vectors, so the image can be zoomed in to get clearer detail.
CountingPine (
talk)
13:26, 28 December 2007 (UTC)reply
Interesting results. I use PolyView 4.36[1] for generating PNG from screen captures. I'd use a vector format if it was SIMPLE, like
Obj. It would be nice to have a simple line-drawing script format maybe like something
BASIC-ish: view 100,100; pencolor red; line 10,10 to 90,90; brushcolor blue; Circle 50,50,5. That would be easy to generate from my program. Or like an
RPNPostScript format?
Tom Ruen (
talk)
20:38, 28 December 2007 (UTC)reply
No one is required to learn to use vector graphics software to upload an image. Note that the raster images are not being deleted. However, vector graphics do provide advantages over rasters for collaboration. That is one of the reasons why SVG is preferred. No immediate action is required, but the template indicates that an improvement is requested. --
ChrisRuvolo (
t)
19:47, 26 December 2007 (UTC)reply
I just find it annoying, like someone running around being critical of things that will NEVER be magically fixed, NOR necesarily should be. Those who CARE about specific images are those most interesting in upgrading, and if no one who cares has the capability, it's wasted effort to tag them, and wasted negative energy on Wikipedia to things that are good enough.
Tom Ruen (
talk)
22:24, 26 December 2007 (UTC)reply
In case anyone is reading this now, this hasn't been true for a while. PNG scaling was fixed long ago. It was still true for black-and-white PNGs, but even that has been fixed now. There really is no reason to use GIF for static images (except possibly really small ones, where GIF is smaller.) —
trlkly00:28, 20 March 2014 (UTC)reply
Even 2 years later, not all web browsers support APNGs. Internet Explorer 8, the most popular web browser at the moment, does not support them. This is still a bad idea. —
trlkly08:21, 16 September 2011 (UTC)reply