File talk:Star of life.svg

Redundancy?

Why should w:Image:Star of life.gif be removed instead of this? This file is larger, much larger when translated into PNG (which it must be for at least a year or two longer). What advantage does it have? Simetrical 21:11, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

SVG is a vector format. If you are not familiar with the difference between a vector and a raster image format, read the this: [1]. The file is a bit larger but its information content is much larger (see previous link). Furthermore, because the file consists of raw text it can be compressed with a good ratio – the GIF, on the other hand, is already compressed. (Currently SVGZ, which is zipped SVG, is not supported, but it probably will be in the future.)

And now to your last argument – when commons, wikipedia, etc., render an SVG to a PNG the renderings is optimized for speed, not file size. An SVG can easily be rendered to a small PNG (even smaller than a GIF), JPEG, GIF, whatever, if file size was the important factor.

I hope that explains why we are replacing bitmapped images with vector illustrations. –Gustavb 00:09, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, I won't argue, but all I can see is that for now, we have a much larger file that takes up extra CPU time to boot, and this will persist until SVGZ gains widespread browser support.

It is not the case that larger files always results in more CPU time when rendered, this has to do with how the format is constructed. More bandwith is used, but I think it's marginal in this case. To reduce the file sizes (if this was an issue), Wikipedia could optimize the pre-rendered PNG:s automatically.

If it were conceivable that we'd want to blow up a 200×200 image substantially at some point in the future, I could see the point, but as it is, I can't see any possible benefit for several years to come. Reason would seem to dictate we keep the PNG for now. Simetrical 01:20, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

It is not only about what this "we" want to do, it's about all people that use Wikipedia and Commons. I would like Commons to be a place where I can get high quality images and illustrations for all different kinds of use, and I don't think I'm the only one. Say for example that I would like to use this illustration for a printed matter, then a bitmap version wouldn't be sufficient. Another reason to use a vector format which I didn't state in my last reply is that it brings the possibility to easily edit graphics and also reuse it in a lossless way. –Gustavb 01:55, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

File information

This file was marked as equivalent to w:Image:Star_of_life2.png from en.wikipedia.org according to the NowCommons tag.

This is the edit history for that file's page:

• [2004-11-28T10:00:56Z] Rama ({{PD}})
• [2006-02-08T21:36:15Z] Swatjester (update copy)
• [2006-02-08T21:45:02Z] Swatjester (insig)
• [2006-04-03T21:50:02Z] Gustavb (+redundant)
• [2006-04-04T06:36:20Z] Shizhao

Original title:

• Star_of_life2.png

Upload log:

• (del) (cur) 09:00, 21 October 2005 . . Riumplus (Talk | contribs) . . 414×366 (2,888 bytes) (Switched from truecolor to palette-based encoding to losslessly shrink the file size by 48%)
• (del) (rev) 10:00, 28 November 2004 . . Rama (Talk | contribs) . . 414×366 (5,538 bytes) ({{PD}})

Text:

{{redundant|Image:Star of life.svg}}

{{PD-USGov}}

{{insignia}}

Poccil 13:01, 19 September 2006 (UTC)