Re: Some comments on <image>

Opera supports GIF on all platforms (including Opera mobile and Opera  
mini).

Full list of raster graphics formats that are supported (from  
http://www.opera.com/docs/specs/presto26/#graphics):
- GIF
- JPEG
- BMP
- ICO
- WBMP
- PNG
- APNG (from Presto 2.1)

Cheers
/Erik

On Mon, 20 Sep 2010 02:01:43 +0200, Alex Danilo <alex@abbra.com> wrote:

> Most mobile browsers won't.
>
> This is to minimize memory footprint more than a technical
> issue.
>
> But GIF isn't continuous tone - it's a palleted colour
> format so is pretty lame.
>
> JPEG was the real game changer for browsers that made
> the web really take off. Try doing flesh tones in GIF;-)
>
> The spec. sets the minimum requirements. At the time the
> spec reached recommendation, GIF was encumbered and a
> poor image format anyway, so wouldn't have been included
> for those reasons. There are clear rules about use of IP
> encumbered things in W3C specs, hence why there is no
> video codec mandated either...
>
> Alex
>
> --Original Message--:
>> All five of the major released browsers (ASV, FF, Opera, Chrome and  
>> Safari) support GIF in SVG. I don't know about IE9 or mobile platforms.
>>  D
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: Jeff Schiller
>> To: anthony.grasso@cisra.canon.com.au
>> Cc: David Woolley ; ddailey ; www-svg@w3.org
>> Sent: Sunday, September 19, 2010 7:18 PM
>> Subject: Re: Some comments on <image>
>>
>> Out of curiosity - is there any browser that doesn't actually support  
>> GIF files in svg:image ?  I'd be surprised...
>>
>> Jeff
>>
>> On Sun, Sep 19, 2010 at 4:10 PM, Anthony Grasso  
>> <anthony.grasso@cisra.canon.com.au> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On 20/09/2010 4:22 AM, David Woolley wrote:
>>
>> ddailey wrote:
>>
>>
>> 1. The spec says "Conforming SVG viewers need to support at least PNG,  
>> JPEG
>> and SVG format files." Why not GIF? I recall a profound nervousness
>>
>> I think the basic reason is that PNG can exactly represent any image  
>> that GIF
>> can represent, except for animations, and usually does so more  
>> compactly for
>> equal quality, but also has the option of better quality.
>>
>>
>> In saying that, there is nothing stopping an SVG viewer/editor (to my  
>> knowledge) from supporting GIF in addition to JPEG and PNG. :)
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> that spread like squid ink through the open source community [1] 10 or  
>> 12
>> years ago as the holders of the GIF patent threatened to go after those  
>> who
>> used it without license. I believe, however, that the patent has since
>> expired. [2] A search of gif in Google images shows about a billion  
>> files with
>> close to half that number for PNG. In many cases GIF
>>
>> Image formats are often chosen without any real understanding. There  
>> are an
>> awful lot JPEG images (or PDF images using DCT) that are totally  
>> unsuitable for
>> JPEG, either because people believe it produces the best compression for
>> everything (and only make one dimensional decisions), or because they  
>> don't know
>> PNG and paintbrush produces very poor GIFs.
>>
>>
>> files are smaller than PNG files, I think, and lots of the older public
>>
>> Although it is possible, and may be more common for very small images,  
>> the
>> compression scheme used in PNG is generally better than that used in  
>> GIF (the
>> LZW used in GIF, and the actual subject of the patent, is designed as a
>> compromise between compression speed and and compression ratio - it was  
>> really
>> intended for real time compression of streamed data. That in PNG is  
>> designed to
>> give good compression, at the expense of slow compression speeds.
>>
>> Apart from the possibility that PNG may have a higher overhead, the  
>> other reason
>> that you may observe this is that PNG has more possible formats, and,  
>> for
>> example, paintbrush uses 24 bit unpalletised for PNG and uses a  
>> non-optimised
>> palette for GIF.
>>
>>
>> domain imagery sites on the web used gif because, well, PNG wasn't  
>> available
>> then. All the browsers I know of go ahead and support GIF anyhow, but  
>> it is
>> one thing we can be certain of that no longer has patent entanglements.  
>> PNG??
>> Who can ever be completely sure until the 20 years pass?
>>
>>
>> It's very likely that any such patent would also affect GIF.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>


-- 
Erik Dahlstrom, Core Technology Developer, Opera Software
Co-Chair, W3C SVG Working Group
Personal blog: http://my.opera.com/macdev_ed

Received on Monday, 20 September 2010 12:35:29 UTC