Talk:Portable Network Graphics

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[edit] Pronunciation

I've never heard anyone pronounce it "Ping" and most people would look at you blankly if you said it, which was why I thought writing "the official pronunciation" seemed a bit odd. Most people don't read the implementation standard to find out how to pronounce an abbreviation. Ojw 11:12, 14 August 2005 (UTC) (henceforth referring to libpng as l'Academié Pingèse)

Everyone I know pronounces it "ping". --KJBracey 14:58, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
The prononciation is defined as "ping" by the official specification. It's a specification feature! --Adhemar
Strictly speaking, abbreviations are never pronounced in proper English. The official specification is simply wrong (and yes, this is "feature"): it is more accurate to say P-N-G is officially called or referred to as 'ping' (which I have never heard used by the way). There is no pronounciation, proper or improper, for any abbreviation including PNG. I just found this a bit odd and annoying especially for an encyclopedia. Yes, it's the language police!!!! 207.112.56.138 01:30, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
That's absurd; people pronounce abbreviations all the time. NASA is na-suh, for example, GNU is gnu, and BASIC is pronounced like basic. If you meant something else, please elaborate, because I cannot interpret your message in a way that makes sense.--Prosfilaes 04:36, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
Most people I know pronounce it as "png" or "p-n-g", but then again, I live in the Netherlands. There is also the question of whether a specification should address what is essentially a linguistic issue. Suppose for a moment that a specification would contain the line "This format is called Foo, which is pronounced 'bar'." Would you accept that? I sure as hell wouldn't, so by extention I don't see a reason to accept this for PNG either. 82.139.85.9 (talk) 02:45, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Culturally, suggesting both pronunciations (as "ping" or "P-N-G") seems appropriate. As mentioned above, in the USA, many acronyms are pronounced as words, if they don't sound awkward, such as NASA ("naa-suh") or Space Shuttle contract STSOC ("Stee-sock"), but not IRS (spoken "I-R-S" since "urrs" or "ires" would be awkward) and not DoD (spoken "D-oh-D" since "Dodd" would be odd). For company names, there's "AT&T" (spoken "A-T-and-T") or "IBM" (spoken "I-B-M") versus "DEC" (spoken "Deck" not "D-E-C"), and DEC's computer OS "VAX/VMS" was a combination word+letters (spoken "Vacks-V-M-S" not "vims"). Some people in the USA commented that Operation Iraqi Freedom should have been renamed as Operation Iraqi Liberation ("OIL" as the word). Hence, pronouncing "PNG" either as a word, or letters, fits English as spoken in the USA plus other countries. -Wikid77 (talk) 09:58, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] png/jpg file comparison w/ transparent

"Using PNG instead of a high-quality JPEG for such images would result in a large increase in filesize (often 5–10 times) with negligible gain in quality."

recently i converted an image to png (no downsizing) and turned the largely white background into a transparent background which cut down tremendously on file size and was nearly the size of the original jpg. i think its fair to note this somewhere in the article, anyone disagree? --AlexOvShaolin 22:22, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

That's not exactly due to the transparency, it's probably more because when you made the made those areas transparent, you made them a uniform colour, and areas of uniform colour compress very well.
Many image editors, when making parts of an image completely transparent, will also reset the colour values (normally to black, I think.)
You should get similar results if you just paint the background areas as a solid colour. In fact, you'd probably get a smaller result since an Alpha channel would then not be needed.
Of course, a similar trick could be used with a JPEG image. Solid blocks of colour will compress quite well under JPEG too. CountingPine 19:09, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Internet Explorer 3

IE3 actually has a update available that allows it to support PNGs. I know this only because I remember applying it back in the 90s... 87.112.74.244 (talk) 13:49, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Pix or it didn't happen. 82.139.85.9 (talk) 02:46, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Library support?

This page should contain a subsection in "Software support" called "Library support". 82.139.85.9 (talk) 02:46, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia PNG nightmares

04-Feb-2008: The handling of PNG files on Wikipedia has involved many nightmares of changing problems with speed, access, display, and lockouts over the past year. Although PNG files are typically 4x to 21x times slower than equivalent JPEG thumbnails, they have been used to display numerous photographs or paintings on Wikipedia. There was even a massive effort to convert all small GIF or JPEG files (which showed a text label) into gargantuan PNG files, causing Wikipedia articles to become mostly PNG data and no longer primarily text in 2007. The massive size of PNG thumbnails can be seen by right-clicking on image properties in Wikimedia Commons, which formerly also worked on Wikipedia to show image width/height, file name, and file size. The right-click menu for PNG/SVG images was disabled on Wikipedia during late 2007 (but not on Wikimedia Commons), and it is no longer possible on Wikipedia to right-click open PNGs in a new window or display the image properties/sizes. For a few days in November 2007, the right-click menu once again worked for Wikipedia PNG files, but in December 2007, the right-click menu for PNG images was disabled again. As if that weren't bad enough, for people expecting to right-click open a PNG image in a new window, as of February 2008, attempting to stop the slow, massive download of gargantuan PNG files usually will lock-up a browser, until going offline. Formerly, all during 2007, a massive PNG file could be stopped by clicking the browser "STOP" button to quit the gargantuan download of the bloated PNG files, and resume viewing of a Wikipedia article. However, in February 2008, the PNG download began forcing the browser window to continue the slow download of gargantuan PNG images by locking that browser window when the "STOP" button is clicked, and continuing a hacked download attempt, unless the browser is taken offline to release that locked window and resume viewing the page. Not only are many Wikipedia files bloated with the mass of gargantuan PNG files, but once those PNG images begin the massive download, the browser window becomes jammed to prevent scrolling text. However, by stopping a Wikipedia article soon after the text appears, the PNG images can be pre-empted, and the page can be scrolled to read the text (with blank images) or to just "Show Picture" for each JPEG or GIF image on the page. To make matters even worse and worse, for a while, Wikipedia was forcing the text portion of each page to wait until the slow, massive download of gigantic PNG files was completed, BEFORE any part of a Wikipedia page would be displayed. Of course, there was no Wikipedia announcement that these peculiar changes in spastic handling of the gargantuan PNG files would impact users in such bizarre and nightmarish ways. Note that the problem is not the gigantic PNG files, but rather peculiar changes in the way Wikipedia displays PNG files, because on Wikimedia Commons, PNG files are always incredibly slow, massive downloads, but STOPPABLE mid-way, and the right-click has never been blocked to prevent viewing the massive sizes of PNG images, nor the browser locked or forced to display those gigantic PNG files on Wikimedia Commons. The nightmare of unpredictable PNG image viewing, blocking, and browser lockups has only occurred on Wikipedia. The use and handling of PNG images has made Wikipedia look like a very trashy and cumbersome website, as well as slowing response time for many thousands of Wikipedia users. As usual, GIF and JPEG images incur no delays or lockouts of any kind. At this point, I must advise: avoid using all PNG images on Wikipedia until the PNG-garbling has been resolved; GIF or JPEG images will still allow users to right-click open in a new window and can be stopped during display, without browser lockup. -Wikid77 (talk) 05:49, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

This page is for discussing the article on PNG files. See Wikipedia:Bug reports for how to report problems with Wikipedia. --Zundark (talk) 08:41, 4 February 2008 (UTC)