Burning mad: conversion software frustration

Submitted by Ratface on May 23, 2000 - 05:45.

Good move on the conversion from GIFs to PNG's... shame it seems you didn't look any further before dashing off an article. gif2png is a pretty quick hack of a program. It's not really intended to be user friendly, but given the right instructions it does an OK job. If you want more control over the process, or want a more user friendly interface, you'll need to use another program. I can't recommend which, as it depends on a whole bunch of different things (do you want to use software you have, batch process, fine tune each image individually etc...). Personally I would recommend that for the best results, you should remake every image as a PNG - that way you can guarantee the best results. A converter will only do a straight conversion, it can't do the best possible job of optimising your graphics. However a list of converters can be found here- http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/pngapcv.html What I can say is that gif2png is a command line program. By the sounds of it, you took the program, double-clicked on it in Windows and then gave up when it just sat there. In the zip file you downloaded there is a file called readme. If you actually read it, it contains instructions for using the program. It's a shame that you had difficulty using this software - but I have difficulty seeing why this merits article space on evolt. If you had taken the time to "Read The F***ing Manual" (as they say), or ask a few questions on (for instance) The List, you would almost certainly have solved your problems.

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Submitted by isaac on May 23, 2000 - 08:18.

Hi Ratface/Steve - thanks for your comment. I was the one who edited/approved this article, so you can blame me for it being on evolt.org. ;) It was originally set for the Software category, but I thought that it was very much a personal effort/opinion rather than an extensive attempt, so I threw it across to Commentary & Society. I do think that it will be valuable to the evolt community - it points out possible problems that others might face in a conversion, and finishes suggesting that re-creating each image may be the best option - which is more or less your suggestion. An advantage of comments on evolt.org is that others can post their experiences and suggestions. If even one comment can help one other person, then I think the posting of the article has probably been worthwhile.

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Submitted by Anonymous on May 23, 2000 - 16:11.

Hmmm. Apparently I need to make my point a little more clearly.

I wasn't posting just to complain that I had trouble burning all my GIFs, but to point out that I think most other people would, too.

For example, there wasn't a README in the .ZIP file -- there wasn't a .ZIP file at all, actually; the web page I mention above for the Windows version just links to the .EXE file. There was no M, let alone a FM, to R.

Why do I think this is a problem? Because I see a lot of support for Burn All GIFs, and I'd like to be a supporter, as well. But if getting rid of GIFs is an issue that activists want anyone other than hardcore wireheads to get behind, then promising easy tools that end up being hard to use isn't the way to do it.

I want to be able to point people to GIF-burning resources and feel confident that they'll get all the information they need to be able to use them.

Thanks much, by the way, for your pointer to the list of converters -- it does state up front that gif2png requires libpng and zlib, which is really what I needed to know going into this. Additionally, it pointed me toward The Exorcist, a great little Windows version of gif2png -- exactly the sort of thing I was looking for.

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Submitted by Ratface on May 24, 2000 - 00:55.

Hey webmutant (cool nick by the way :-) I'm glad that you did get your issues sorted out in the end and that the link was helpful. Interesting that you found a copy of gif2png that came "bare" as it were. Looking at the license it looks as though people are required to ship documentation with it. Anyways, it's good to read your followup, as that is what makes information like this useful in the long run. I agree with Isaac that as a commentary piece, this is useful material - even more useful now that you have discovered a tool you can recommend to others :-) Let the Gif burning commence :-)

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