File talk:Flag of Australia.svg

 

More on the colours

I believe the colours used in this SVG are wrong for a variety of reasons, particularly the shade of blue: it is far too bright. Problems and points of discussion include:

1. Web-safe colours are now basically irrelevant since displays not capable of true colour haven’t been made for a decade or more and are probably exceedingly rare. Even so, I argue that the web-safe colours used in this SVG (white excluded obviously) aren’t even the best web-safe approximations of the intended darker shades.

2. The official Flags Act 1953 shows a representation of the colours (though not specified specifically) in which the shade of blue can best be described as very dark, navy or similar. This is the most official document pertaining to the flag, yet by comparison the RGB values in Wikipedia’s SVG are way off and not even close. [1](https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2008C00376)

3. The bright blue in this SVG does not match the blue being used in the Australian Red and White Ensign SVGs depicted in the Flag of Australia article and their own relevant articles. Should they not be consistent? If not, why not?

4. The article “Flag of Australia” already contains a darker version that’s a closer approximation to the intended colours from the legislation, and also the suggested Pantone colours, so why isn’t it being used? However even this appears to deviate from the Flags Act and other ensigns and may not be the best or most correct RGB approximations.

5. In New South Wales, the relevant act states that the NSW flag features “The British Blue Ensign, being a dark blue flag with the Union Flag (also known as the Union Jack) in canton, bearing in the fly the State badge” [2](https://www.legislation.nsw.gov.au/#/view/act/2004/1/sch2). Why is this relevant? Because the NSW (and other state flags) existed before the Australian national flag. It’s also likely that there’s intended to be consistency between the shades such that they may be flown together and not appear to mis-match given their similarities. The colours in the Flag of Australia SVG do not match those being used in the flag of New South Wales SVG.

6. I argue that the style guides posted by relevant government departments are only “guides” and “semi-official” in nature. They’re not declarations of the official colours, carry less weight than the legislation and it’s possible even they got it wrong (they’re public servants and public servants make mistakes all the time, I should know I used to be one!).

7. Since the specific shades are not defined in legislation, consistency is probably the one principle that remains paramount. The RGB colours used in the Flag of Australia SVG are not consistent with the other Australian ensign SVGs, nor do they match any British ensign SVG or many of the Australian state flag SVGs like that of New South Wales.

For these reasons, I think I’ve pretty comprehensively debunked the current SVG as being far too light and bright, particularly the shade of blue. The Flags Act and/or recommended Pantone colours should trump web-safe colours that are inherently limited and increasingly deprecated. Due to Wikipedia’s prominence, I’ve seen this propagate widely. I don’t know if there’ll ever be agreement on the RGB values unless they’re defined in legislation, but I do sense the current SVG is way off in its representation of colour for the reasons described above.

The advantage of darker shades is they increase contrast and make the individual elements of the flag more prominent and identifiable. Simonmetcalf (對話) 12:29, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

The colours of the Flag on the https://www.pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/files/pmc/Honours/flag_template_colour.gif website are even brighter.So the flag should be more bright. Techie3 (對話) 14:39, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

Shade of red

This isn't an urgent thing, this idea will probably just simmer in the background. The shade of red according to the Australian Government (last updated May 25, 2006) is Pantone 185C, though this red on the flag at the moment, looks a bit dark. I've added a note to this effect to Commons:Pantone color chart/British flag colours.

By Commons:Pantone color chart/British flag colours we'd get white/280C/185C

white

#00247D

#E60D2E

compared to what we have at the moment, which are the same colors that were on the first version of Image:Flag of the United Kingdom.svg, which has specs for white/280C/186C:

white

#002B7F

#CE1126

swatch idea copied from Jacobolus at this page

Should the colors be changed? Yaddah 02:48, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

The Australian Government Style Guide (http://nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn45358) states the following colors for when the Australian Flag is depicted on web sites:

white

#00008B

#FF0000

I've therefore redrawn the flag as follows:

1. Adjusted colors to these RGB specs;

2. Grouped elements by colour (Blue, White and Red);

3. Scaled and integrated the elements of the Union Flag into the design;

4. Removed any references to the Union Flag's divergent RGB colors;

5. Redrew white portions of the Union Flag. These previously comprised four mirrored elements, whose oddly shaped inner corners were hidden beneath the red elements when the file was viewed, but which were visible if the file was used elsewhere and the white elements were viewed separately.

6. Recalculated coordinates of the scaled Union Flag elements, and verified accuracy of star coordinates. Ian Fieggen 08:38, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Update: I've now uploaded my new version: "Flag of Australia RGB.svg" (since deleted).

The question now arises as to whether this version should be adopted as the "standard", and if so, whether I should upload it over the top of the current Flag of Australia.svg (this has since been done). I wouldn't like to breach etiquette, so I'll await confirmation before overwriting Dbenbenn's file. Ian Fieggen 02:20, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't think you breached etiquette, since you demonstrated good faith and explained the changes on the talk page---you have nothing to worry about there!

WRT the flag, while I have no issue with the new flag itself (it is based on an official source, after all), it might pose issues when compared to the rest of the flags which are generally colored on the Pantone-based/or similar scheme (Pantone opens up a whole other can of worms like RGB/CMYK/color space in general, etc). As long as there is some justification I'd say you'd have a valid defence if challenged... not that I'm saying you're not right :D.

Also btw the Union Flag's mirrored elements were there for code efficiency---I think its well known that no program implements SVG (version 1.whatever) perfectly, with Inkscape, Adobe-programs, RSVG etc all having their own implementations which they believe to be correct---so any percieved difference, are probably the renderer's fault.

ButterStick 01:51, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your feedback, I appreciate it. You may be interested in the color discussion that is still running on the Australian Wikipedians Notice Board.

By the way, I had no problems with the fact that the previous version used mirroring - in fact, I did so myself in the new version for the sake of efficiency. The problem was the way the elements were constructed and mirrored in that they did not fully overlap. This was not a rendering problem - look at the code and you can determine this in the coordinates. If the red elements were removed, this lack of overlap was visible as large angled "slices" cutting into the straight cross.

As there may be people using the .svg file for other purposes, such as constructing an actual flag from blue, white and red pieces, I saw these incomplete segments as a potential problem. In any case, I was rewriting the file anyway, and my changes actually ended up simplifying the code somewhat in the process.

For anyone interested, ButterStick has since uploaded Flag of Australia (converted).svg, which incorporates the converted Pantone colors that more closely approximate the actual flag colors in real life. This gives everyone the ability to choose between the official "bright" version or the unofficial "natural" version. Ian Fieggen 00:36, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Flag colours

I did some internet searching and found this discussion page at Flags of the World (FOTW). Apart from providing an interesting history of the Union Flag, it contains a discussion in which there seems to be some consensus on the best representation of the colours in RGB. To quote:

"After an intense discussion enlightened mainly by Graham Bartram, we sort of decided that the best browser-safe approximates for the union jack colors are RGB:204-0-0 for red and RGB:0-0-102 for blue (plus RGB:255-255-255 for white, of course!), that is our FOTW equivalences for dark red (R+) and very very dark blue (B+++)."

Though these look dark, they do indeed seem to closely resemble any printed flag I've ever seen and most representations on the web. By contrast, the bright version of the Australian Flag in use on Wiki Commons looks quite tacky in comparison. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.84.16.222 (talk • contribs) 07:28, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, this RGB colouring is an officially provided one, so someone in the Australian govt obviously thought of the situation of showing the flag using RGB. If you follow that link about FOTW equivalences, they are not designed with colour fidelity in mind---the colours on FOTW are to describe rather than show various flags. 118.90.113.2 14:41, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Hungarian description

Please add {{hu|Ausztrália zászlaja}} to the description. Thank you, Bence'Talk 07:04, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

• Added. odder 21:38, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Categories

This file should be added to Category:SVG sovereign state flags. Homo lupus (talk) 07:03, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Added. odder 22:08, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

This file belongs also to Category:Southern Cross flags. --Sarang (talk) 09:06, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Added, thank you for your help. Patrícia ^msg 19:16, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

new Cat

I'm sorting SVG sovereign state flags alphabetically. Please edit the cat tag to "Category:SVG sovereign state flags|Australia Fry1989 (talk) 23:04, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

 Done. --ZooFari 01:57, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Also used at. . .

Manual listing of other resources not polled by the 'used in' function.

• OpenStreetMap User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 17:04, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Southern Cross

The correct spelling is Southern Cross not Souther Cross. — 以上未簽名的留言是由該使用者加入的： Majormax (留言 • 貢獻) 12:29, 16 May 2011 (UTC) (UTC)

Typo fixed, was located within a template. Bidgee (talk) 12:46, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

New language

I please add code {{fi|:fi:[[Australian lippu|Australian lippu}}. –ElmA (Talk – My files) 12:48, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Replace with optimized

{{editprotected}}Replace with File:OptiFlag of Australia.svg. Palosirkka (talk) 17:44, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Not done. File deleted. Regards. --Marco Aurelio (disputatio) 09:01, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Replace with simplified

200px|thumb|right {{Editprotected}} I've created a simplified SVG file at File:Flag of Australia (simplified).svg, which uses no matrices (only scales and translates) and has an exact and seamless Union Jack. I've noticed that the Beta and Delta Crucis stars are a bit shifted upwards from how they are in the current file, but I think my version is consistent with the construction sheet. SiBr₄ (talk) 12:52, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm putting this on hold until an SVG expert watching this file comments on whether the stars are shaped correctly. odder (talk) 13:00, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

The two images are exactly the same, only two of the stars differ slightly in position. SiBr₄ (talk) 14:20, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Can someone upload here the current revision of File:Flag of Australia (simplified).svg? It is now a valid SVG file. In the old version some object ids started with numbers. SiBr₄ (talk) 08:30, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

 Done Thank you! :) −ebraminio^talk 13:47, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Hues

You have probably noticed, that the hues of blue and red are different than in the flag of Britain? --Christmas Island (對話) 13:18, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

The color difference is due to the fact that the Australian government has an official specification for the colors to be used, which are indeed rather brighter than those adopted elsewhere. See the topic Shade of red above. Ian Fieggen (對話) 22:42, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Blue color was wrongly converted in PNG version

I've just found the blue color is actually #00008c on screen with Firefox's native color picker, and I get the same results with Notepad++ plus Quick Color Picker+ plugin, however while I getting the original SVG file, viewing source, all the hex color codes are right. That's weird.
Here is an archive of this page: https://web.archive.org/web/20181221084330/https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_Australia.svg
So what's wrong with it? --Great Brightstar (對話) 17:17, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

Commonwealth star is missing

{{Editprotect}} Can the Commonwealth star be readded, seems it was removed in 2013 without any comment as to why. Bidgee (對話) 01:06, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

Given that it seems that it's used on a couple of thousand pages, I'm not sure why this was not noticed in 2013. @Zscout370: ? SHB2000 (對話) 01:31, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

It is a bug, i believe with the rendering software, I was puzzled too but in an archived version as recently as late August the star is still there. I haven't found any announced changes to the software in the meantime. Phabricator is confusing to navigate, but someone had to change something, surely it didn't just happen out of nowhere.--TFerenczy (對話) 09:30, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

The topic is discussed at the Dutch Wikipedia helpdesk too. When the raw .svg itself is opened the sixth star does show up, so it is a problem with the MediaWiki-software that creates PNG raster versions from the SVGs, per user:bdijkstra → bertux 17:42, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

SiBr₄, do you have knowledge about issues like this or could you name someone who has? Can it be fixed? Is a workaround necessary? → bertux 17:50, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

Seems to be the same issue that was brought up on my talk page last October. The problem is probably some change in the librsvg renderer around a year ago. Since then, clones (<use> elements) that refer to other clones have no longer functioned, despite being valid SVG. Since PNG thumbnails are cached, only newly uploaded files are usually affected; this is the first problematic file I've seen that wasn't overwritten since the issue started. It is on Phab as T270630.

The workaround is to bypass these recursive clones, either by pointing them directly to the target element or by placing the intermediate clone in a group and pointing to that. My updated code (tested against the renderer using SVGedit) is below, but it would need an admin to be implemented because the file is upload-protected. SiBr₄ (talk) 22:53, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

I support this change. I think File:Flag of Australia (converted).svg should be modified similarly too, although the star has not yet disappeared. --Mike Rohsopht (對話) 14:26, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" width="1280" height="640" viewBox="0 0 10080 5040">
<defs>
<clipPath id="c1"><path d="M0,0H6V3H0z"/></clipPath>
<clipPath id="c2"><path d="M0,0V1.5H6V3H6zM6,0H3V3H0V3z"/></clipPath>
<path id="Star7" d="M0,-360 69.421398,-144.155019 281.459334,-224.456329 155.988466,-35.603349 350.974048,80.107536 125.093037,99.758368 156.198146,324.348792 0,160 -156.198146,324.348792 -125.093037,99.758368 -350.974048,80.107536 -155.988466,-35.603349 -281.459334,-224.456329 -69.421398,-144.155019z"/>
<path id="Star5" d="M0,-210 54.859957,-75.508253 199.721868,-64.893569 88.765275,28.841586 123.434903,169.893569 0,93.333333 -123.434903,169.893569 -88.765275,28.841586 -199.721868,-64.893569 -54.859957,-75.508253z"/>
</defs>
<g transform="scale(840)">
<rect width="12" height="6" fill="#00008b"/>
<path d="M0,0 6,3M6,0 0,3" stroke="#fff" stroke-width="0.6" clip-path="url(#c1)"/>
<path d="M0,0 6,3M6,0 0,3" stroke="#f00" stroke-width="0.4" clip-path="url(#c2)"/>
<path d="M3,0V3M0,1.5H6" stroke="#fff"/>
<path d="M3,0V3M0,1.5H6" stroke="#f00" stroke-width="0.6"/>
</g>
<g fill="#fff">
<use id="Comwlth" xlink:href="#Star7" transform="translate(2520, 3780) scale(2.1)"/>
<use id="αCrucis" xlink:href="#Star7" x="7560" y="4200"/>
<use id="βCrucis" xlink:href="#Star7" x="6300" y="2205"/>
<use id="γCrucis" xlink:href="#Star7" x="7560" y="840"/>
<use id="δCrucis" xlink:href="#Star7" x="8680" y="1869"/>
<use id="εCrucis" xlink:href="#Star5" x="8064" y="2730"/>
</g>
</svg>

 Done —‍Mdaniels5757 (talk • contribs) 16:12, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

It's time to fix the colours

Flag of Australia.svg

Flag of Australia (converted).svg

I would like to propose we change the colours to better represent how the flag actually looks in common usage.

It appears the current colours were decided following good discussion in 2007 started by Ian Fieggen at Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board/Archive 25#Flag of Australia - Screen Colors. Even then it was noted that these colours were off (opinions ranging from a "bit bright" to "horrible") and inconsistent with other ensign flags. However ultimately these colours were selected because they were deemed to be the "official" RGB colour values, being specified in a government style guide.

This style guide was written in 2002. The internet was a different place back then, and I suspect the the authors favoured using web-safe colours (a much more limited colour palette) at the expense of more closely representing real-world colours. Also - it's just a style guide intended for public servants, and not an authoritative definition of the Australian flag. I would also refer to the excellent points made by Simonmetcalf in the section #More on the colours above.

I note that this style guide has been superseded by a digital version which makes no mention of RGB values for the flag. You could say that today, the only officially recommended colours that the government gives us are the Pantone values defined on the the PMC website.

So why continue to use these odd RGB values? I suggest we take a fresh look at how to best represent the colours of the flag. We have offical Pantone values, and my recommendation is to use the RGB equivalents set out at Commons:Pantone color chart/British flag colours, i.e. as exhibited by File:Flag of Australia (converted).svg. These colours are far closer to what the flag looks like in real-life and how it is commonly depicted in digital contexts. Even Wikipedia articles like Australia and Flag of Australia have long displayed this version of the flag.

What do people think? Liguer (對話) 10:02, 3 January 2024 (UTC)