Removal of MNG/JNG support and builds

avih · Post by **avih** » June 5th, 2003, 6:02 pm

i didn't hear of MNG/JNG before reading this thread, but anyhow, 300K is WAY too much to decode a single image format. damn, you could put in XVID (MPEG4 video coder AND decoder) and it will take much less than 300K.

i think they should focus on bringing down the footprint of these decoders. imho, 10K-20K should be more than enough, even for an unoptimized reference implementation (although i didn't read the spec).

for the time beeing, i'd live happily without MNG/JNG support and it's footprint.

tseelee · Post by **tseelee** » June 5th, 2003, 7:43 pm

RIV@NVX wrote:If it is still going to look the same, I won't complain... but if not, I am switching back to SeaMonkey

I haven't read one post that mentions a site that can't be viewed correctly w. MNG support removed. I mean, if it's so important that you are willing to take such a big performance hit, just download the XPI. 300kb here and there add up to MBs.

asa · Post by **asa** » June 5th, 2003, 11:46 pm

David James wrote:QT, now MNG. I wonder what is next...?

That said, could someone provide some sites where MNG is actually used? And what would these sites do to support IE, as it seems rather pointless to use graphics that IE can't display.

The only sites I could point you to which use MNG that I've ever run into in the wild are MNG-related sites (people advocating mng usage or publishing mng tests like http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/img_png/p ... nim-lc.mng ). IE ignores mngs completely and that's unlikely to change which makes them mostly useless on the web.

The MNG decoder is larger than all of the other image decoders combined _plus_ all of the imagelib code and it's just not used. My searches suggest that there are about 100 times more Photoshop!! image format files on the web than mng images. MNG may be a great technology but it really only does one useful thing above and beyond png and gif. It lets you have alpha transparent animations. I don't think that's worth carying around the code and the bugs of a decoder larger than all of our other image decoders and image library code combined.

--Asa

neilj · Post by **neilj** » June 6th, 2003, 1:27 am

I think the main use is in themes, rathere than on the internet - animated GIF transparencies just don't look so good. Ah well... the themers will just have to manage.

FiddyCent · Post by **FiddyCent** » June 6th, 2003, 4:02 am

The main advantage of an MNG over an animated GIF is that it is patent free - the proper alpha support and better file sizes are the icing on the cake.

I don't know why you would drop support for a great open format just to save 300kb rather than trying to optimise the decoder and support a superior and patent free alternative to animated GIFs.

DarkAngel · Post by **DarkAngel** » June 6th, 2003, 4:33 am

MNG is definatly a great format, techically, imho, but the sad thing is, its just not going to catch on.
So, until it does (and it has had a while, MNG has been 1.0 since Jan '01), we may as well remove it, and save the space it occupies, which is almost 5% of a Firebird Build.
Thats undeniably a lot when you consider what it does. As asa said, the only sites that use it are MNG test suites. I have never seen an MNG in the wild, so to speak. And the unspeakable reality is, without IE support, it stands almost zero chance of becoming a web standard. In fact, i dont even think it is web standard as put down the W3C standards body, to which this project aims to adhere to so closely. Of course, Mozilla project supports other little 'pet' formats, but in the end, i expect they will go the way of MNG. And yes, we should continue to work towards a decent, fast SVG implentation, if that is what the project believes will become the standard. With Windows working towards DPI-independant display support and a completely vector based internal graphics engine, due to the forthcoming high DPI LCD panels, etc, vector graphics will increase in importance for the web too.
However, customisability and 'user choice' is also what this project is about imo, so the ability to obtain it as an XPI is a definte plus. There are many things i would love to see built in the Mozilla project, avaiable as XPI's, so i am not too worried. Such is the nature of open-source projects.
And also, from a different side, i did read somewhere (i believe it was in the reinstate MNG bug), that the IE team at MS had shown an interested in it. Since it seems to have little support from the W3C, this could be a good omen for its support in a future IE version!

asa · Post by **asa** » June 6th, 2003, 11:00 am

FiddyCent wrote:The main advantage of an MNG over an animated GIF is that it is patent free - the proper alpha support and better file sizes are the icing on the cake.

I don't know why you would drop support for a great open format just to save 300kb rather than trying to optimise the decoder and support a superior and patent free alternative to animated GIFs.

It's bigger than <strong>all of the other image decoders plus the the imagelib combined!</strong>. You think it makes sense to include one decoder that's larger than the combined total of all of our other decoders and image handling code so that we can have support for an almost totally unused on the web image format because it doesn't have patent issues (patent issues which have been completely ignored by 99.99% of web developers)?

My opinion is that when someone comes back with an MNG decoder that's ~50K, rather than the current ~300K, so it's reasonably close in size to the other decoders <strong>and</strong> they agree to maintain the code, we should consider taking it back into the tree.

--Asa

tseelee · Post by **tseelee** » June 6th, 2003, 2:00 pm

asa wrote:...so that we can have support for an almost totally unused on the web image format because it doesn't have patent issues (patent issues which have been completely ignored by 99.99% of web developers)?

Correct me if I'm wrong but I first heard of png when the GIF controversy started. So one could argue that the patent issue can be resolved without using MNGs...

Post by **alanjstr** » June 6th, 2003, 2:04 pm

tseelee wrote:
asa wrote:...so that we can have support for an almost totally unused on the web image format because it doesn't have patent issues (patent issues which have been completely ignored by 99.99% of web developers)?

Correct me if I'm wrong but I first heard of png when the GIF controversy started. So one could argue that the patent issue can be resolved without using MNGs...

Yes, but no one uses them. It took a long time just to get people to use PNG's.

BartVB · Post by **BartVB** » June 7th, 2003, 3:35 am

Eeeeh, call me stupid but why would anyone use MNG on a 'real' site when there are no browsers that support it

It's a very classical chicken/egg problem IMO. It's the same as with PNG, when Mozilla had support for PNG for a few months there weren't a lot of sites that used PNG.

But if I understand correctly we're only going to support MNG when IE starts supporting it

For the other supporters of MNG; please vote on this bug

http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18574

I really hope that MNG is added to the tree again as soon as there is a new maintainer for it :\

rmdenby · Post by **rmdenby** » June 7th, 2003, 9:25 am

What is a throbber???

Post by **alanjstr** » June 7th, 2003, 9:34 am

rmdenby wrote:What is a throbber???

In the classic sense, it is an image that sits in the upper right corner of your web browser. As the page is loading, the image changes ... throbbing .... and stops when the load has completed. With previous browsers, you could not remove it from your toolbars. This has changed with Firebird, since there are other visual clues that your page is done, such as the progressbar on the statusbar.

rmdenby · Post by **rmdenby** » June 7th, 2003, 9:35 am

Ok. Thanks

Homer · Post by **Homer** » June 7th, 2003, 5:53 pm

Guys, given asa's stats on usage, including this in the trunk is bloody useless waste. If you want it as an extension, your call, but if no one uses it, then its a dead format and its BLOATED beyond what is remotely usable or justifiable.

If 5% of the program code is there for rendering something that no one uses, how does that contribute to the aims of the project? The more useless and extraneous crap that gets added, the slower and more bloated Mozilla will become. My view is that Mozilla should render everything that you will see out there on the net. But this is ridiculous, and my congrats to the devs for showing some balls in turfing dead weight.

willll · Post by **willll** » June 7th, 2003, 6:51 pm

um, the windows xpi is only about 90 kb, 191 kb unpacked. 90 kb out of 6745, is not even 1%. or since when has 191 kb out of 18.5 MB equaled five percent? even if the decoder somehow 300 kb unpacked, that's still not even 2% of the total size.

Removal of MNG/JNG support and builds

This makes me sick

Re: This makes me sick

Re: This makes me sick

Re: This makes me sick