Re: [DRAFT] QA Tips - Gif versus PNG

Alex, Brian, All.

On Saturday, Oct 18, 2003, at 00:15 Asia/Tokyo, Alex Rousskov wrote:
>>> This is a draft Open for comments for future publications
>>> Draft - PNG vs GIF
>>
>> <http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/png-gif>

> I am not in a position to agree or disagree with draft status changes.
> I am just an outside reviewer. I find it annoying that explicitly
> solicited and specific comments are "addressed"  by a "write specific
> fixes!" response. Please do not expect me to become a co-author of
> this 10-sentence tip by contributing specific text.

Nobody asks you to become co-author of the Tip, it's just my personal 
view that if we want to make these QA tips, it is better to make it a 
collaborative work, and, IMHO, this is best done if reviewers also 
suggest improved wordings along with their comments.

That said, after re-reading carefully your comments, I think some of 
them make important points.

> As of today, the draft still contains stale text ("expires in
> the USA on June 20, 2003"). The draft is still missing any
> information regarding patent expiration dates in countries
> other than US.

Good point about the stale info.
The patent apparently will expire in a year for the other countries 
mentioned.
The Tip should the probably use less emphasis on this.

On Saturday, Oct 18, 2003, at 01:24 Asia/Tokyo, Brian Kelly wrote:
> It's becoming unclear to me with the QA group is the technical 
> marketing
> wing of W3C or an honest balanced broker of advice, covering legitimate
> concerns over deployment issues.

I don't think in terms of "biais" or "dishonest marketing". The QA 
group is working (among other things) on education about W3C 
technologies. We try to build a better awareness of these technologies 
and would like to have them used in the best possible way. For me this 
clearly fits into the latter category. But honesty and balance, too, 
are in the eye of the beholder.

> Deployment of PNG has been hindered by the lack of support in browsers.
> However modern browsers do provide support for PNG.  Before deploying
> PNG you should ensure that it will be usable by the browsers which
> access your site [1].  An alternative approach, used on the W3C Web
> site, is use of content negotiation, so that older browsers will 
> receive
> a GIF but modern browsers the PNG equivalent.
>
> [1] give reference to list of supporting and non-supporting browser
> [2] give reference to details of how to implement this.

Very good suggestion, I'd like to have it added to the tip if that is 
fine with you.

I would like to give Karl a clear idea of what needs to be done, so 
could we agree that:
- less emphasis on the patent issue
- adding the warning about support of PNG and giving the conneg 
technique
- adding a conclusion about the preferred (though with care) choice of 
PNG
would make the tip "ready for publication"?

Thanks,
-- 
olivier

Received on Friday, 17 October 2003 21:19:06 UTC