MarioWiki:Proposals

List of talk page proposals

 * Split into Adult Shine Block and Small Shine Block. (Discuss) Deadline: December 1, 2016, 23:59 GMT

Writing guidelines
None at the moment.

New features
None at the moment.

Removals
None at the moment.

Clarify the Wiki's policy on APNG images in .png files
The replacement of .gif files with .apng files is not yet viable due to the lack of support on the browsers that have the majority of market share. There is however, a second case which is similar but also importantly different: that of APNG images in .png files. The first frame of this kind of images is shown by all browsers that support PNG images but not APNG images. In fact,, the Wiki infrastructure already supports them as well, to the point that the details about the animation are shown next to the image name, and there is even a warning message about the automatically generated thumbnails not being animated. The current image use policies don't forbid them either, the only way to know that they are not recommended is seeing an old proposal.

At this point, I think a final clarification on this special kind of images should be done, and since it is impossible for them to be used for all kinds of animation, I see two possible policies, beside that of not changing anything:

TOLERANCE

The APNG images in .png files should be tolerated in special cases where the first frame is already informative enough, while not being mentioned in the policies in order to avoid suggesting their use; for example, a rescaled (250px of width) version of my example image might seem viable for infoboxes (please note that it won't be actually used as such, it's just an example image!), as the first frame is already informative enough, while the animation is a welcome plus. Note that this scenario does not enforce modifying the current infrastructure to generate animated thumbnails; while this would be a welcome feature, ultimately an user using this kind of images should also take on themselves the burden of uploading and using versions of said images with appropriate width and height on the Wiki, with due notices when this needs to happen and it's not happening.

COMPLETE AVOIDANCE

The current image use policies should be updated to explicitly forbid the use of APNG images in .png files, automated measures to issue warnings on APNG images on .png files might be done as well, but they are not part of this choice, since the Wiki staff should be able to handle the few cases in which these images are uploaded already well.

Proposer: Deadline: November 26, 2016, 23:59 GMT

Tolerance

 * 1) I still think that, while they cannot fully replace GIF images and they cannot even be suggested as viable format for animated images, the APNG images on .png files can be useful in cases like the one I mentioned.
 * 2) For me, a static picture on my end would be better than a bad looking picture. And when the day comes that Google does support APNGs, APNGs will become more popular. Especially since GIFs are outdated a bit. I support APNGs in PNGs.
 * 3) I've been supportive in the past of APNG's that enhance the visual experience without being required, per that. Also see my comment below.

Complete avoidance

 * 1) See my comments below.

Not changing anything

 * 1) See my comments below.

Comments
Quoting myself from here: "There is no such thing as a .apng file, in the same fashion as there isn't a .agif file. The extension is always .png, animated or not." Be mindful of this. Bulbapedia is a good example of good use. A lot, if not most sprites are APNG's over there. They don't appear to have any form of policy that I could find on it though, everyone just seems to go with it and tag them with a template. 15:03, 19 November 2016 (EST)
 * Should we then create a template that highlights the nature of the APNG? The bold warning below the text may not be immediately apparent. 19:26, 19 November 2016 (EST)
 * A template more or less is a must-have to avoid people replacing them with static images. Here's an example of usage. To illustrate the effect, two animated sprites are used in the template, with the warning not to replace the image if neither sprite moves. Images are also categorised. We should have a similar template to warn users to not upload static images (minus the first frame thing, as that isn't always the case). 04:04, 20 November 2016 (EST)
 * On a side note, the bold message is from MediaWiki:File-no-thumb-animation or MediaWiki:File-no-thumb-animation-png. These can be customized to be more prominent or suppressed in favor of a template notice. -- 08:53, 20 November 2016 (EST)
 * Thanks, though those pages are for the Wiki's main language (US English) only and won't affect users with a different display language. 16:43, 20 November 2016 (EST)

Although the quality is nice and can completely replace GIF, APNG is not a mainstream format nor is it an official format like GIF is. Internet Explorer doesn't support it and Google Chrome requires a plug-in. Also PNG Monstrous doesn't play nice with it because it removes metadata, and I think APNG's frames are metadata to the PNG format. Also what are some programs that could be used to create these APNGs? It would be much better to distinguish APNG with PNG by extension instead of a template. I think that MediaWiki can support the extension, judging by Special:MediaStatistics. MNG is being developed by the same group as PNG so there will be a distinction unlike PNG and APNG, but no MediaWiki support yet. -- 04:49, 20 November 2016 (EST)
 * MNG has already been released, but no browser development team wants to support it (Mozilla dropped support in its browsers in 2003); currently it's impossible to upload .apng images on this wiki (I tested this personally); the program you can use to create those APNG images are GIMP (I personally used it to create my example image) and VirtualDub (which I used to create this image); finally you're right, the other frames are in the ancillary chunks, meaning you should not use optimizers that get rid of ancillary chunks in these kinds of images (you should never get rid of ancillary chunks, by the way, as there are also those about gamma (gAMA chunk) and color space (cHRM, iCCP and sRGB), so you should seriously reconsider the use of these kinds of optimizations).--Mister Wu (talk) 06:26, 20 November 2016 (EST)


 * There is no reason to go about MNG as absolutely no support exists for it whatsoever, which isn't the case with APNG. Secondly, PNG is build around chunks, of which Mister Wu named a few. Some are indeed metadata, no problem (some of which you shouldn't delete, like author and copyright comments), others are used for the right display, gamma and animation chunks being examples. Optimisers just need to support these chucks in order to be viable, either be optimising them or ignoring them. The way PNG is build up makes the metadata-ness of a chunk up to what it does, not it's build. Another editor to add to Mr. Wu's list is RealWorld Paint, and there are some programs you can feed separate PNG's and frame durations. 06:42, 20 November 2016 (EST)
 * This brings up an interesting question about how to optimize APNGs. Just like Photoshop, GIMP doesn't optimize its output if saved in the PNG format. PNG was never designed to be animated because the group thought that it would be dumb to add confusion to the format. Are there any programs that just "stitch together" PNGs to be outputted as APNG (no loading of the image to just be resaved and undo optimizations)? That's the only way I see optimization happen with APNGs. --!
 * I think this is outside the scope of the proposal, but I believe that most outputters will only save the changed region of the image as a frame, i.e. if only a small region changes, only that region is saved. This is according to standard and is good practice anyway. A frame is saved in the exact same format as a normal PNG image (though all frames must use the same format), just named differently. You can choose to replace the entire aforementioned region, or paint over it, the latter being a good thing if the region doesn't change much, but does contain a lot of detail. Enough optimisation opportunities. 16:43, 20 November 2016 (EST)
 * THe APNG specification allows to code differences from previous frames using the Alpha channel, indeed, when adding the Alpha Channel in VirtualDub I obtained smaller file sizes in two cases I tested, in the case of my aforementioned example, without Alpha Channel the size is 224 MB, with Alpha Channel the size is 135 MB, so there are indeed many possible ways to optimize the output files; some of which are apparently already in use by current software.--Mister Wu (talk) 17:14, 20 November 2016 (EST)

Here's a different question; do APNGs work in iOS or Android? Also since the whole file is downloaded and nothing gets animated if it isn't supported, this could be really be detrimental to people with slow or metered connections. I'm pretty sure that GIF is massively supported and preferred in these cases. -- 18:24, 20 November 2016 (EST)
 * They work in iOS, and are even used and recommended for iMessage. They will likely be supported in Android as soon as Google Chrome supports them (this might happen earlier than expected, as development should start in Q4 of this year according to the Google Chrome staff). Regarding the concern of data use, my example, despite being formed by 7 frames at 786 × 890 resolution at 32 bits per pixel (8 bits per color channel + 8 bits Alpha channel), is still a 686 KB file, while the GIF is a 345 KB file despite being palettized; since there is a 10MB upload limit on the Wiki and due to the nature of the proposal, the APNG images would be used mostly for in-game data, which is easily compressible with the PNG format.--Mister Wu (talk) 19:03, 20 November 2016 (EST)

Miscellaneous
None at the moment.