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GIF Support Returns to GD

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the celebrate-good-times-come-on dept.

g_adams27 writes "Legions of geeks and developers owe a debt of gratitude to Tom Boutell and his "gd" library, which powers the drawing and graphic-generating tools used by dozens of open-source projects. And now, with the expiration of the last Unisys patent on the GIF format, support for GIFs has finally been reinserted in gd. The GIF/PNG/MNG wars may continue, but having more options is good!"

8 of 364 comments (clear)

  1. Did anyone really stop using gifs? by Neil+Blender · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I know I didn't.

    1. Re:Did anyone really stop using gifs? by Tumbleweed · · Score: 4, Insightful

      For 'many' of the uses? Hardly. If you save a PNG as 24-bit, even though it has 8-bit or fewer colours, even pngcrush (or the better such program, pngout) can't help much. Saving a PNG properly, THEN using pngout will almost always produce a smaller filesize than GIF. It's _exceedingly_ rare that you'd have a smaller GIF - usually only when you're using a 1 pixel transparent GIF for a web site spacer graphic, which you _should_ know how to avoid doing by now, anyway, if you're anything resembling a well-informed web developer.

      Bah. A pox on GIFs!

      Now if only Adobe could get off their lazy crappy-programmer asses and put proper PNG compression in Photoshop so we wouldn't _need_ programs like pngcrush & pngout.

  2. Gif is only good for animation by wheany · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The only thing gif does better than png is animation. Okay, on some rare occasions, gif compresses better. But most of the time, you have no reason to use gif instead of png.

    1. Re:Gif is only good for animation by rjamestaylor · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Beta was and is better than VHS. Anyone understanding video would choose Beta over VHS. Millions of average people began buying VHS machines because they were cheap. Millions more began buying VHS machines because they would play other people's tapes. Beta, the superior technology, lost to the cheaper, "good enough" VHS because of market adoption. Internet Explorer has and will always have GIF support. Its PNG support is less than optimal. Got something you want everyong to see? Use GIF.

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  3. Answer to the inevitable PNG Slashbots by IGnatius+T+Foobar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The usual crowd of nincompoop Slashbots are going to crow "They should just leave it out! Everyone should use PNG anyway!!"

    Let me answer that in advance by reminding everyone that GIF is a useful format. Everything can read it and display it. It's been around for two decades and is now a completely open and unencumbered standard.

    And let's not forget that when you need to display an image that is non-lossy, and supports transparency, and displays properly in Internet Explorer (shame on you for using Internet Explorer in the first place, but we'll accept that a lot of people still do) ... GIF is still the only available option.

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  4. Re:Seeking legal advice by Kphrak · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's YRO not because GIFs could violate your rights online, but because Unisys, the holder of a submarine patent on GIFs, could. That's one of the main reasons we switched to PNG. Now the patent expired, meaning our rights to use GIFs, without getting the pants sued off us, are back.

    Please increase your clue level before posting. The article is correctly filed.

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  5. Wrong by adiposity · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Unless you know the business internals and license agreements of those companies, you have no idea whether they respected the patents or not. However, all major graphics program vendors (Adobe, JASC, etc.) have LICENSED the gif compression algorithm, and used it in their programs. Those who paid to use those programs have the right to create gifs.

    These commercial softwares did not disrespect "IP-rights," they meticulously followed the law by doing exactly what's required to use the patented algorithm. They showed respect for the patent by paying to use the algorithm. Free software respected the same rights by not using what they hadn't paid to use (because they either couldn't or weren't willing to).

    -Dan

  6. Re:I may owe you an apology... by femto · · Score: 3, Insightful
    You have just illustrated a shortcoming of proprietory software. MS (or predecessor) wrote a library, licensed it to Adobe and that is where it stayed.

    *If* MS and Adobe were free software projects, Adobe would have gotten its simplified PNG library and had a product to market just as quickly. Another person could then have come along and at a later date and implemented the remaining filters. In this way Adobe gets a working product quickly, but at a later any missing features get filled in.

    As it is the proprietory model delivered the fast product, but missed out on the 'incremental improvement' stage.