Comment by unglaublich

19 hours ago

I think JPEG XL's naming was unfortunate. People want to associate new image formats with leanness, lightness, efficiency.

There was a constraint - since 2009, the Joint Photographic Experts Group had published JPEG XR, JPEG XT and JPEG XS, and they were probably reluctant to break that naming scheme.

They're running out of good options, but I hope they stick with it long enough to release "JPEG XP" :-)

Considering "jpeg" has become the shorthand for "digital picture", it would be a shame not to capitalise on it.

It seems to me this point of discussion always tends to get way too much focus. Should it really raise concern?

Of all the people who interact with image formats in some way, how many do even know what an image format is? How many even notice they’ve got different names? How many even give them any consideration? And out of those, how many are immediately going to think JPEG XL must be big, heavy and inefficient? And out of those, how many are going to stop there without considering that maybe the new image format could actually be pretty good? Sure, there might be some, but I really don’t think it’s a fraction of a significant size.

Moreover, how many people in said fraction are going to remember the name (and thus perhaps the format) far more easily by remembering it’s got such a stupid name?

Crappy as a .jpg, only bigger.

Actually, I remember when JPEG XL came out, and I just thought: cool, file that one away for when I have a really big image I need to display. Which turned out to be never.

Names have consequences.

  • I regularly work with images larger than 65,535px per side.

    WEBP can only do 16,383px per side and the AVIF spec can technically do 65,535, but encoders tap out far before then. Even TIFF uses 32-bit file offsets so can't go above 4GB without custom extensions.

    Guess which format, true to its name, happens to support 1,073,741,823px per side? :-)

  • > Crappy as a .jpg, only bigger.

    Honestly, that's exactly what it sounds like to me too. I know it's not, but it's still what it sounds like. And it's just way too many letters total. When we have "giff" and "ping" as one-syllable names, "jay-peg-ex-ell" is unfortunate.

    Really should have been an entirely new name, rather than extending what is already an ugly acronym.

And yet WEBP decided to associate itself with urine, which google then forced on everyone using their monopoly power.