Feature request: Allow XPM file format
I am missing "xpm" from the list of file formats allowed in art submissions.
For those who don't know xpm: It is a paletted image format where the image is defined by a string array using C syntax. The format was designed for 8bit icons and the typical tool to create an xpm is a text editor.
Of course it is possible to convert from xpm to png, but in some sense such a conversion is lossy:
- An xpm can contain C style comments.
- The palette keys (substrings, usually of length 1) can be descriptive.
- The palette does not have to be injective: It is possible to use different keys for the same colour and thus convey more information. For example, one can thus distinguish a black outline from an area which just happens to be black but plays a similar role as some orange area.
These are corner cases, but they suffice to make the xpm version the source of the image, a GPLed png obtained from such an xpm would not be distributable without the xpm alongside.
I have some old stuff I intend to submit. It's all xpm and all above possible reasons for lossyness do occur.
xpm should be an allowed format now
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Full Steam Ahead! o/ <-- little ascii fist in the air holding a debugging hammer.
xpm is uncompressed? Then it should ideally be uploaded inside of archive files.
I dont know if its compressed or not however bmp is also uncompressed but it makes sence to allow it and i see no downside to allowing xpm, ideally in my opinion OGA would allow all formats except for some (.exe for example) however thats not possible with the current site design.
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Full Steam Ahead! o/ <-- little ascii fist in the air holding a debugging hammer.
You can put your xpm file in a zip archive. I do that for nanim files.
There are other concerns with allowing particular file formats.
Drupal uses a PHP library called (I believe) GD to do most of its image manipulation. GD is a very capable library, although it tends to expect fairly standard formats. The upside of using GD is that preview image generation is very easy for me to maintain, and it doesn't involve spending dozens of hours (that I don't have) poking around in code writing custom image conversion functionality for esoteric formats. Secondly, even if I did write that custom code, it would take away my ability to easily manage image preview formats from within Drupal's GUI, and make it just a general pain in the butt all around.
I don't have a problem with submissions in this format, but what I need in that case is for you to put them in an archive file (zip, 7z, etc) that OGA accepts, which will require that you also upload a preview image in a standard format.
Edit: One other thing I need to consider is general site usability. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe that XPM is a particularly common format. It's quite likely that it won't open in common image editing programs (perhaps GIMP will open them, but I doubt a lot of Windows and Mac based applications will). This is the first time I've ever seen someone request that people be able to submit XPMs. Unless there's more demand, I'm inclined to say no for the time being.
gd supports xpm
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Full Steam Ahead! o/ <-- little ascii fist in the air holding a debugging hammer.
Clearly I need to check these things before I talk, or I'll end up with a mouthfull of my own foot. ;)
GIF, JPG, PNG, BMP, and XPM are the formats supported, thats why I enabled it :)
That said next time there are no more missing formats in the gd library so you are in the clear
Also XPM is a nich format, but it is used, in fact i think KDE uses it for some stuff iirc
EDIT: My bad its the x window system that uses it
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Full Steam Ahead! o/ <-- little ascii fist in the air holding a debugging hammer.
Thanks.
So what is the policy regarding compression? So far I only submitted xpm files inside of tar.bz2 files, thus not actually using the new feature I requested. How should I handle future submissions?