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Comment by cubefox | Hacker News Reader

While JPEG XL is great in most aspects, in terms of file size AVIF is substantially smaller at medium image quality. AVIF has a lot of problems though, e.g. no progressive image loading or limited resolution. The situation is really frustrating, since there is only a once-in-multiple-decades chance to replace JPEG and PNG, and this chance should better be met with a format that is great at everything. Because if it succeeds, we will be stuck with its shortcomings for a long time, just as we were stuck with JPEG for decades.

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> a format that is great at everything

I too want a magical flying unicorn, and maybe we can make one in the next 40 years, but in the mean time I will happily accept to be stuck with a magical jpegxl unicorn that can’t fly.

You get your unicorn only if it can fly. Otherwise the Chrome team gives you a flying donkey. A non-flying unicorn happens to be not on the table.

i think png will never be replaced because you will always be able to tell that a png file is lossless, but jpeg is almost always used as a lossy format, and you will never be able to tell at a glance whether someone cared enough to make it lossless for a particular file

(note: losslessly preserving jpeg artifacts is still lossless if those artifacts were already present in the source material)

That's a good point, though image viewers could add that information to a "more info" dialogue.

i don't look at dialogs before i download, save, or pick a file from a directory listing

But you look at your image viewer that could have the lossless indicator? (and there is an issue open to add this indicator to the jxl files)

https://github.com/libjxl/libjxl/issues/432

i doubt windows explorer would add an indicator over every thumbnail in a directory listing, and that is a very specific use case (you having a bunch of photos already on your computer and wanting to know if they are lossless), it's incredibly contrived and useless in the real world

Why are you calling your use case contrived and useless? Also, why is windows explorer relevant when there are much better file/image "listers" out there?

it's useless as a solution to the actual problem because usually the filename and an image preview are the only pieces of information you get about an image no matter where you are and saying "well just display the quality level" is incredibly ignorant of the literal entire world not doing this

uploaded a file to discord? preview and filename

found an image on google? preview and filename

opening a file on your computer? i fail to understand how windows explorer is not relevant when you can't just set the image viewer for save/open dialogs on windows, that's just not a thing that's possible to do

and even then, do i want to know the quality level of an image only after saving it manually? also no

tl;dr when you see a .jxl file you have no idea how compressed it is, but when you see .png you know that it's always lossless. it's not hard to understand how png will stay relevant for at least this reason

> usually the filename and an image preview are the only pieces of information you get about an image no matter where you are

that's obviously false, it entirely depends on "where you are"

> ignorant of the literal entire world not doing this

The entire world is ignorant enough to not know that png is lossless

Also, don't hide behind the entire world, this conversation is about you "i don't look at dialogs before i download, save, or pick a file from a directory listing"

> fail to understand how windows explorer is not relevant when you can't just set the image viewer for save/open dialogs on windows, that's just not a thing that's possible to do

(by the way, it'd be entierly possible to add metadata even in Windows Explorer when this https://github.com/saschanaz/jxl-winthumb/issues/26 is added)

but you're not forced to just the save/open dialogs of the default file manager. You can even use a more convenient workflow of navigating in your file manager and making the open dialog switch there, and within your file manager you would have more info vs WinExplorer The "save" dialog is worse, so that would require implementation of the feature mentioned above

> when you see .png you know that it's always lossless.

that's also obviously false, lossless is a feature of the workflow (your note conveys some familiarity with this simple fact), not just the file format, and since you don't know how much loss there was before you get to download the final PNG, you can't say that it's lossless Yes, that's a useful heuristic, but then it's just that, not "always"

Likewise > and even then, do i want to know the quality level of an image only after saving it manually? also no

For the same reason, you actually don't know the quality level of an image for any format

> it's not hard to understand how png will stay relevant for at least this reason

it't not hard to understand, yet you don't. PNG will stay relevant simply because widespread formats are sticky and it takes a while to switch even to a strictly superior alternative like JXL

> that's obviously false, it entirely depends on "where you are"

i said "usually"

> > it's not hard to understand how png will stay relevant for at least this reason

> it't not hard to understand, yet you don't.

i said "at least"

this argument isn't productive anymore and i won't be continuing it, have a nice day

> i said "usually"

still false since in addition to the dumbed down web platforms you've included a PC in the set And your example is wrong - just checked that google images doesn't show an extension (the link is too long to see it, and some links don't even have it, and in a mac save as dialog you also don't see it), so PNG imaginary advantage isn't even "usually" there

> i said "at least"

this also doesn't help you since your reason is incorrect, so it can't be a factor

> this argument isn't productive anymore and i won't be continuing it, have a nice day

lol, you've missed the chance to make it productive by ignoring the core issue that PNG doesn't signal losslessless

But you can't tell that png is lossless as you don't know how much loss there was before png

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