Re: Call for informal discussion: APNG

It really only needs two things to get my vote.  That is to recommend
the extension .apng instead of .png
in the filenames, and to define a different MIME type.  In fact,
mozilla has pursued the separation of apng
from png to the extent of recommending a different internet mime type.
They registered image/vnd.mozilla.apng
(see http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/image/vnd.mozilla.apng) in 2015
but then decided they didn't like that, and put in the APNG spec:
"APNG can be identified using
the image/apng MIME type." without anyone's approval, with someone
stating in the
bugzilla report words to the effect, "we'll deal with IANA later".


On Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 7:09 PM, Chris Lilley <[email protected]> wrote:
> This is a call for informal discussion on APNG - specifically, the three
> chunks acTL, fcTL, and fdAT.
>
> These chunks have been discussed before, and voted on before. Per the rules
> for registration:
>
>  The same chunk cannot be brought up again for another discussion
>  period and vote either until a 180-day waiting period has elapsed, to
>  allow for implementation and testing, or until a substantial change
>  to the specification is made.
>
> APNG failed voting on 20 April 2007, which is more than 180 days ago:
>
> FAILED
> APNG 20070405a
> ftp://ftp.simplesystems.org/pub/png-group/documents/
> png-apng-proposal-20070405a.txt
>
> Voting has closed on the APNG proposal.  There were 8 YES
> votes, 10 NO votes, no abstentions, and no ineligble votes
> cast.  The proposal has failed and the APNG chunks are not
> registered.
>
> My reason for re-opening discussion is the "implementation and testing"
> part. APNG has since become widespread. Compared to animated GIF, it offers
> 24bit (and 48bit!) colors rather than 256, and full transparency rather than
> binary opacity.
>
> Regardless of what we may think about the reduced capabilities relative to
> MNG, or the advisability of re-using an image type for animations, this is
> the current state of the world and it seems sub-optimal to me that the PNG
> specification and extensions documents continue to not reflect this. I would
> like therefore to kick off informal discussion, then a formal discussion
> period and (re)vote.
>
> APNG continues to be supported in Mozilla Firefox (and other apps using the
> Gecko rendering engine), starting from version 3, June 2008.
>
> APNG is supported by Safari (and other apps using the WebKit rendering
> engine) since version 8, October 2014.
>
> In addition, native apps on MacOS X and iOS use native support for APNG,
> since iOS 10 and OS X Yosemite, October 2014.
>
> APNG is now supported by Google Chrome (and other apps using the Blink
> rendering engine, such as Opera and Samsung Internet), starting from version
> 59, June 2017.
>
> Microsoft Edge does not support APNG, but MS Edge Devs stated that this is
> "under review". Meanwhile, APNG displays in Edge as the first frame, which
> is the expected fallback behavior.
>
> A starter document is attached to facilitate discussion.
>
> --
> Chris Lilley
> @svgeesus
> Technical Director @ W3C
> W3C Strategy Team, Core Web Design
> W3C Architecture & Technology Team, Core Web & Media
>
>
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