Exif Marks The Spot As Fresh Version Of Png Image Standard Arrives
The free graphics format that people actually know how to pronounce has been updated.
The World Wide Web consortium has announced the third edition of the specification for the Portable Network Graphics format – or PNG, pronounced “ping”, for short. The chair of the W3C working group in charge of PNG, Chris Blume, has a description of what’s new in post entitled PNG is back!.
Along with improved storage of EXIF data and official HDR support, the standard now officially supports APNGs – animated PNGs. This extension was devised by Mozilla and it’s become part of the standard.
The PNG format has been around for quite a while, although it is fair to say that coverage on The Register has focused more on security holes in programs that can display it — as for example in 2010, and in 2015, and again in 2019.
In all that time, there have only been two previous major revisions. Version 1.0 [PDF] when the standard was announced back in 1996, and a second edition in 2003.
The format has a number of important advantages. Despite some relevant Apple patents, PNG is freely usable, unlike the GIF format, which was patent-encumbered. And Unisys demanded a $5,000 license fee if you used it back in 1999. That’s why the GNU website eschews GIFs, although in principle, the relevant patents expired between 2003 and 2004. It didn’t stop El Reg from offering official logos in the format, anyway.
However, more significantly, there was controversy over how to pronounce “GIF”, a subject so vexed that The Reg returned the next year. Although the G in GIF stood for “Graphics”, its creator, the late Stephen E. Wilhite, maintained to the end that it should be pronounced jif.
Also, pretty much everyone supports PNGs now, which is more than can be said of some other formats, such as poor JPEG-XL, shunned by Google and by Interop 2024 even though supported by Apple. ®
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