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| − | {{comic
| + | ==SOON THE TRUTH WILL BE REVEALED== |
| − | | number = 2116
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| − | | date = February 25, 2019
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| − | | title = .NORM Normal File Format
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| − | | image = norm_normal_file_format.png
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| − | | titletext = At some point, compression becomes an aesthetic design choice. Luckily, SVG is a really flexible format, so there's no reason it can't support vector JPEG artifacts.
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| − | }}
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| | | | |
| − | ==Explanation==
| + | '''THIS WIKI IS CENSORING THE TRUTH''' |
| − | Cueball's friend seem to have sent him a rather unusual datafile passed off as a new "normal" standard.
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| − | 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 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.
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| − | Further, the size of the data is bloated by being converted first from 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.
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| − | The comic image links to a [https://twitter.com/openelex/status/853977391747801088 tweet by OpenElections] that displays an Excel file produced by the City of Detroit that contains a lookup table for the city's absentee precincts in 2016. The data had been input as ClipArt files (images) of the values, instead of being entered in the spreadsheet cells.
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| − | This comic is reminiscent of the comic [[763:_Workaround|Workaround]], which also describes convoluted formats.
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| − | 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 is a vector graphic format that is fundamentally a lossless format. 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. 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.
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| − | | |
| − | ==Transcript==
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| − | {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
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| − | :[Cueball is at a computer. Someone is talking to him from off-panel.]
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| − | :Voice: I sent you the data.
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| − | :Cueball: Thanks!
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| − | :Cueball: …this is a Word document containing an embedded photo you took of your screen with the spreadsheet open.
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| − | :Voice: Yeah? Does your computer not support .NORM files? Maybe you need to update.
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| − | | |
| − | :[Caption below the panel:]
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| − | :Since everyone sends stuff this way anyway, we should just formalize it as a standard.
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| − | [[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
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| − | [[Category:Computers]]
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| − | {{comic discussion}}
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