Supported image formats

[Brandon Invergo]

Hi,

Currently, the Treaty requires cover art to be "jpg" or "png" (5.9.1).
There are some games in IFDB that have gif covers (see, e.g., "Earth
and Sky" or "Future Boy!").

Can I suggest that "gif" be officially permitted for cover formats by
the Treaty? Perhaps it requires the stipulation of not being an
animated GIF.

-brandon (PyIFBabel developer)

[Andrew Plotkin]

I am hesitant to expand the spec these days. Interpreters are, by and
large, no longer being updated. It would be a mistake to declare that GIF
is "supported" when nothing is going to change on the software side.

It's true that GIF no longer has any disadvantage (the patent issue having
expired), but it doesn't have any advantages over PNG either. Unless you
count animation, and I agree that animated covers are a bad idea.

--Z

--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*

[Brandon Invergo]

On Fri, 2018-10-12 at 22:56 -0400, Andrew Plotkin wrote:
> I am hesitant to expand the spec these days. Interpreters are, by
> and large, no longer being updated. It would be a mistake to declare
> that GIF is "supported" when nothing is going to change on the
> software side.

Fair enough. I agree that no drastic changes should be introduced at
this point (and anyway, it's not like anyone *wants* to hack in gif
support into the babel tool (or the Python equivalent in my case)).

However I will point out that, at least at the level of defining
IFIDs, newer systems (e.g. Twine, Quest) do take the Treaty into
account. My understanding is that the Treaty exists to handle the
classic/canonical systems while providing guidance for those
developing new systems (without requiring that each new system be
specifically mentioned and described in the Treaty). So, in general
there still might be cases where the Treaty will need to be expanded
to accommodate some kind of new development even if the old
systems don't and won't support it.

I'm not saying that GIF is something to raise such a fuss over, of
course, and there's nothing stopping downstream software from
supporting it anyway. Just figured I'd suggest it.

Cheers,
-brandon