Editing 2116: .NORM Normal File Format
Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.
The edit can be undone.
Please check the comparison below to verify that this is what you want to do, and then save the changes below to finish undoing the edit.
Latest revision | Your text | ||
Line 8: | Line 8: | ||
==Explanation== | ==Explanation== | ||
− | + | Cueball's friend seems to have sent him a rather unusual datafile passed off as a new "normal" standard. | |
− | Cueball | + | Here is a photo example of what Cueball might have seen, but presumably with numbers or other data rather than words: |
+ | |||
+ | [[File:XKCD2116.norm.jpg|100px]] | ||
People who work with data, and need data sent to them electronically, typically need it sent in a way that they can easily use it – either in a text format that can be copy-pasted, or as a spreadsheet or CSV file that can be imported into a spreadsheet program, or such. | People who work with data, and need data sent to them electronically, typically need it sent in a way that they can easily use it – either in a text format that can be copy-pasted, or as a spreadsheet or CSV file that can be imported into a spreadsheet program, or such. | ||
− | Information sent by Cueball's friend in this fashion – a photograph of a spreadsheet embedded into a word processing file – is | + | Information sent by Cueball's friend in this fashion – a photograph of a spreadsheet embedded into a word processing file – is absolutely useless for any purpose beyond being looked at. The recipient has no choice but to retype the entire data set, or attempt to use optical character recognition (OCR), and hope that no mistakes are made in the process. |
− | Any functional relationships between data (such as formulas used to compute data values) have been lost. Further, the size of the data is bloated by being converted first from numbers and formulas into text, then | + | Any functional relationships between data (such as formulas used to compute data values) have been lost. Further, the size of the data is bloated by being converted first from numbers and formulas into text, then text into graphics, and then from graphics to embedded graphics in a word processing document. This adds nothing to the content, and only adds steps to the process of retrieving the data. |
− | However useless this kind of data manipulation might be, it is becoming more and more common, especially as more computer | + | However useless this kind of data manipulation might be, it is becoming more and more common, especially as more non-computer literate people find "creative" ways to exchange information. Cueball's friend suggests that this is now a normal way to send files, and that Cueball should update his system to support this new type of file, represented by a ".norm" suffix. |
The caption acknowledges that this has become a ''de facto'' standard and that we should just accept and formalize it. | The caption acknowledges that this has become a ''de facto'' standard and that we should just accept and formalize it. | ||
Line 25: | Line 27: | ||
This comic is reminiscent of the comic [[763: Workaround]], which also describes convoluted formats. | This comic is reminiscent of the comic [[763: Workaround]], which also describes convoluted formats. | ||
− | The title text suggests that eventually compression (or at least compression with data/quality loss) will be unnecessary as technology improves in the future. SVG ({{w|Scalable Vector Graphics}}) is a vector graphic format that is fundamentally a lossless format, representing images using geometric figures. {{w|JPEG}} is a lossy format, representing images as an array of rectangles approximating the original image. Randall suggests that some people in the future may choose to include JPEG artifacts to SVG vector graphics for its "aesthetics", perhaps as a throwback to when lower quality JPEG images were commonplace, or as a form of {{w|glitch art}}. It is possible that some in the future will view JPEG artifacts as giving their images a quaint/retro feel, much the way that some people today use sepia-tone filters on their images. | + | The title text suggests that eventually compression (or at least compression with data/quality loss) will be unnecessary as technology improves in the future. SVG ({{w|Scalable Vector Graphics}}) is a vector graphic format that is fundamentally a lossless format, representing images using geometric figures. {{w|JPEG}} is a lossy format, representing images as an array of rectangles approximating the original image. Randall suggests that some people in the future may choose to include JPEG artifacts to SVG vector graphics for its "aesthetics", perhaps as a throwback to when lower quality JPEG images were commonplace, or as a form of {{w|glitch art}}. It is possible that some in the future will view JPEG artifacts as giving their images a quaint/retro feel, much the way that some people today use sepia-tone filters on their images. |
− | This is made even more reasonable by the fact that the SVG | + | This is made even more reasonable by the fact that the SVG spec employs a lot of filters, and already can embed regular pixel-based JPEG files. Furthermore, it allows JavaScript to be used to manipulate objects, meaning such an effect may be implementable in the current SVG 2.0 spec. |
+ | |||
+ | But this is all undone by the request for "vector JPEG". JPEG is a raster format, not a vector format. Vector formats encode data about lines and shapes and so on, while raster formats encode data about each pixel or groups of pixels. Vector formats can be translated to raster at a given resolution - line A means pixels X, Y, and Z, for example - but translating the other way is difficult - if you have pixels X, Y, and Z in a row, it is not possible to be entirely certain whether they are supposed to be a line or three small dots. Thus, there is not (and, from some points of view, can not be) such a thing as "vector JPEG". | ||
==Transcript== | ==Transcript== | ||
Line 41: | Line 45: | ||
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]] | [[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]] | ||
[[Category:Computers]] | [[Category:Computers]] | ||
− | |||
− | |||
− | |||
− | |||
{{comic discussion}} | {{comic discussion}} |