Gifs use on Graal still-- Stefan or Unixmad Please post on this..!
 

Ok some time ago, been a good while like a year or more we were told NOT to use the gif format any longer and to use png and mng for animated. And yet I still hear of playerworlds still using and uploading gifs for images. UnHoly Nation I hear only accepts gifs for images , why is that and why is this being allowed to continue??? UN is not the only one and I think this needs to be addressed again by the Graal Admin, those playerworlds still uploading gifs need to be told to stop or we need to be told we can use them again. Either Stefan or Unixmad need to post on this and the playerworlds involved need to be addressed.

I think a good way to stop these violations, especially on UN, would be to completely remove gif support from graal. Proper PNGs and MNGs can be made with gif2mng, which comes with Graal.

Gif is a copyrighted format and is why we were told to stop using them. Whether or not the load time is faster is not the point , using them is a copyright violation. They have to be treated like any other copyright and not use this format on Graal, this is what we were told and regardless of why any playerworld wants them for , unless we are told different from Graal Admin, using them is taboo. Besides at some point in time all Graal gifs will be converted to png and mng so all they are doing is creating more work for those who have to do this. How would you like to be the one that has to convert 1000's of gifs? Don't make the job any harder than it is going to be already.:(

How many times do I have to say the words "That doesn't make it legal" to you -_-

As for converting, I think you can copy gif2mng into a dir with all your gifs, open a command prompt, do gif2mng *.gif, and delete all the gifs.

It's not clear if using GIF is illegal, software patents are not allowed in europe and we don't make money with the client which can only read gifs not write them, but if we one day need to delete all GIFs then playerworlds should be prepared. No one should use GIFs anymore, we can enforce removing them soon.

PNGs/MNGs are much better than GIF anyway, smaller file size, better compression. MNGs can sometimes be slightly bigger than GIF animations because Graal doesn't support all MNG-optmization features and the gif2mng program either, on the other hand Graal handles MNGs more efficiently than GIF animations.

Someone suggested to drag&drop files onto the gif2mng exe icon for converting them via the normal explorer window

You were trying to justify UN's use of them.

Either way would be suitable, you could just select all the gifs and drag the lot onto the icon, it spits out the pngs into the directory the gifs are in...

However, the DOS way would be more tidy and i think if you know how to use DOS that would be the way to go

Make a massgif2mng that converts all the gifs in its directory, for the folks who don't know how to gif2mng *.gif

I don't know if its just me, but when I use gif2mng on my gifs, it really screws them up.

??

Always has worked for me.... What do you mean by "really screws them up" ?

A few people use the purple as a transparency, but you have to use the GIF transparency then put into the EXE so trans works.

The color palette gets ruined. Whatever colors I'm using it messes them up and they are used in the wrong places. But its not like I use many gifs anyway. PNG, baby!

Then its just you, as it works for everyone else i think.

bleh, I have a hard times getting mng's to work....btw, anyone know of a good, free mng viewer?

MNGeye was quite compatible when i have checked it out 2 years ago, also you can use Animation Shop Pro but thats not free and can only export to 24 bit mngs as far as i know.

Everything is free, you just have to know how to get it.
=P Just stick to paint like I do... it will make life alot easier.
I use other programs to touch up my end products or make it animated, but all the frames and simple stuff I do in regular paint.

Paint doesnt open mng files

I tried Animation Shop, the trial version, and it was ok I just dont want to pay for it...thanks for the info

I said I do all my basic work in paint. Then I use some type of free animation program and convert it to .gif and have it animated. Then use gif2mng and bingo.

Btw, YOU CAN GET ANYTHING FOR FREE IF YOU KNOW HOW.

::uses Neopaint because its > MS Paint::

Believe it or not, some people have enough common sense to know that piracy is a bad thing.

Exactly why I didnt reply to the comment the 2 times that he said it, lol

I use Paint Shop Pro for all my purposes.

I paid $80-100 for said excellent program and am INSULTED that people would dare pirate it, in the process attracting virii to their computers.


I export from PSP/AS as GIF and convert to PNG/MNG using gif2mng

If we remove gifs, all of my programs (Paint, PSP7, Animation Shop 3) all don't support gifs, and as was stated before, gifs are much lower in filesize than *.png and *.mng and especially if you are makng an animation. Besides, gif's can't be copyrighted because they are globally placed on software, therefore making it legal?
(I wonder if that makes sense...)

I have paid for one PSP (7) but on PSP3 im on day 968 of my 30day trial? Thats messed up they dont ever make them so thy stop after 30days with PSP, and new compute comes with PSP that I buy and the 30day trial goes on forever.

Unisys has a patent on LZW, which is a form of data compression used in GIF files, and they're trying to charge people for using GIFs.

I think we had that discussion already...

Yes but since some servers still insist on using Gifs because of just not knowing or being hard headed, I made this thread. It is to just remind New Managers or existing ones Graal’s position on image formats for Graal.

I actually directed this to the person who said that gif is better than png, because galen kinda proved that it is not.

Umm I dont know where you guys got the idea that GIF's where copyrighted but the GIF format was created by a team of programmers who worked for Compuserv and it's not copyrighted or owned by anyone you can verify this at www.uspto.gov

If GIF's were copyrighted Adobe and the millions of other software titles which use's gif's sure wouldnt use or support them as it would cost money to use the format. Unisys owns a compression scheme used in gif's but due to there releasing the compression as GNU/GPL they cant charge as they were planning and this has been in a few press releases on major software publishing sites.

Yes it seems I was in error on that and it problly came from this "LZW, which is a form of data compression used in GIF files" and has a patent on it. Regardless of that , Graal's policy is to use png,mng and the point of this thread.

me too