Does the .png image format have a text metadata field?

In message , Mayayana
writes:
[]
Apropos of that, I just received a docx file of something
one of my brothers wrote. I immediately save it as TXT
and delete the docx. Docx is bloated, not widely supported,
and requires that I open the gigantic Libre Office just to
read the plain text. I don't see any point in such unnecessary
complexity.

I use the free plugins Microsoft issued to allow Office 2003 to read *x
files. (I agree that there's little _need_for .docx to exist - but sadly
it's becoming increasingly "supported", in that I am receiving more and
more of them.)

--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

....Every morning is the dawn of a new error...

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote

| I use the free plugins Microsoft issued to allow Office 2003 to read *x
| files. (I agree that there's little _need_for .docx to exist - but sadly
| it's becoming increasingly "supported", in that I am receiving more and
| more of them.)

I don't see any point to .doc, either, in most cases.
Word processors are for writing business letters that
will be printed. I actually keep a script on my desktop
to convert doc to txt.

Mayayana wrote:
"Frank Slootweg" wrote

|
| If by "can read it" you mean "can read RW2 format files": IrfanView's
| 'FORMATS' PlugIn can read RW2 (and many other RAW formats and other
| formats).

That's interesting. You're right. I never thought
to try it. Still, though, I don't see any reason to
leave it in RAW format once I've coaxed what I
can out of the image. I'd rather have it in a more
common format. One never knows what will be able
to read it in the future.

Apropos of that, I just received a docx file of something
one of my brothers wrote. I immediately save it as TXT
and delete the docx. Docx is bloated, not widely supported,
and requires that I open the gigantic Libre Office just to
read the plain text. I don't see any point in such unnecessary
complexity.

Have you ever tried opening a .docx with 7ZIP ?

Paul

On Wed, 19 Feb 2020 20:15:32 -0500, Mayayana wrote:

Apropos of that, I just received a docx file of something
one of my brothers wrote. I immediately save it as TXT
and delete the docx. Docx is bloated, not widely supported,
and requires that I open the gigantic Libre Office just to
read the plain text. I don't see any point in such unnecessary
complexity.

One day file extensions will be outdated and machines will work out
how to display the data from a file without the preconception
inherent in assigning a file extension.

"Paul" wrote

| Have you ever tried opening a .docx with 7ZIP ?
|
Yes. Not generally useful. As you probably know,
it's actually just a ZIP file with about 10 compressed
files in it. But even the plain text content is generally
butchered to the point of unreadability.

On Wed, 19 Feb 2020 22:55:36 -0500, "Mayayana"
wrote:

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote

| I use the free plugins Microsoft issued to allow Office 2003 to read *x
| files. (I agree that there's little _need_for .docx to exist - but sadly
| it's becoming increasingly "supported", in that I am receiving more and
| more of them.)

I don't see any point to .doc, either, in most cases.
Word processors are for writing business letters that
will be printed. I actually keep a script on my desktop
to convert doc to txt.

I use RTF, as it keeps the images and formatting... and can be
printed or "saved as PDF" if I want to email it.
[]'s
--
Don't be evil - Google 2004
We have a new policy - Google 2012

"mechanic" wrote

| One day file extensions will be outdated and machines will work out
| how to display the data from a file without the preconception
| inherent in assigning a file extension.

I doubt that. However you do it, somehow there
has to be some kind of protocol that defines how
to interpret data. You could say there are no file
extensions now, if you use Windows default settings
to hide them. But that's only hiding the extensions
from you, not from software. You could also move
the identifier inside, which is partially how it's done
now. You can download a chart listing file "magic"
bytes, for use with identifying a file type. But however
you do it, you can't interpret that data until you
identify the file type and have information about the
protocol of data storage for that file type.

In other words, whether you call it .docx, or make
the first 4 bytes "D O C X", or standardize some kind
of XML marker, with every file actually being a ZIP,
you'll always need the equivalent of a file extension.

But I could imagine a scenario in the not-too-distant
future where a file contains only the text, "I want you
inside me." And that text is just one of 19
parts inside a 4 MB ZIP file, which includes encryption
keys, licenses, privacy policy from each corporate source
that touched the file ("you agree to our policy by
reading this file"), fonts, layout, trademarks, copyrights,
and various tracking numbers and marking data for the
beancounters.

Of course, 100 years from now no one will be able to
figure out what all those things mean...

"Thanks to a generous grant, we have at least determined
that the file contains, among many other things, a message
that reads, in Pre-Civility English, 'I want you inside me'. We
speculate that this may have been a prayer to some unknown
deity. The other content, mostly undecipherable, may have
been some kind of offerings to said god. One file is marked
with a word, 'authenticode'. We're guessing that was probably
a recording of devotional music. Perhaps 'authenticode' should
actually translate to 'the one true [authentic] god'.
It all indicates that these people were probably highly intelligent
and deeply religious. There was also an image of a woman's pelvic
area. We don't know the meaning of that. Perhaps the god was
a fertility god? We're working on getting more funding for
further study of this fascinating and groundbreaking artifact."

"Shadow" wrote

| I use RTF, as it keeps the images and formatting... and can be
| printed or "saved as PDF" if I want to email it.

I've occasionally used that for things like help files.
Bu for most uses I only need the text. If I'm saving
something from an email, an online article, etc, the
text is all that matters. I don't want a DOC or RTF or
EML or PDF to save a friend's flight information so I
can pick them up at the airport. I just want TXT.

If I actually need to create a "document", like a
contract or business stationery, then I'll use Libre
Office.

Another odd thing about RTF: I don't know what
it is, but the display always looks cheap to me. Fonts
are not crisp looking. Color options are limited unless
you customize the code. Not as polished as other file
formats.

So if I want font
and formatting options, for something like a help file,
I'll usually choose HTML. I especially like the fact that
images can now be base-64 encoded inline. So one single
HTML file can be read by anyone, and have pictures
embedded. I keep a script on my desktop for converting
images. The one downside is that support for inline
images has been slow to be supported. Older versions
of IE don't handle it and some older browsers are limited
to a small data size.

In article , mechanic
wrote:


One day file extensions will be outdated and machines will work out
how to display the data from a file without the preconception
inherent in assigning a file extension.

that day was back in 1984 with the original macintosh and classic mac
os, which did not use file extensions.

mac os x, being based on unix, does use extensions.

In message , Mayayana
writes:
"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote

| I use the free plugins Microsoft issued to allow Office 2003 to read *x
| files. (I agree that there's little _need_for .docx to exist - but sadly
| it's becoming increasingly "supported", in that I am receiving more and
| more of them.)

I don't see any point to .doc, either, in most cases.
Word processors are for writing business letters that
will be printed. I actually keep a script on my desktop
to convert doc to txt.

I think you're going a bit too far in totally dismissing word processing
(or dismissing it for private use).

Converting to text is all very well, but (as well as losing pictures),
it also loses formatting, and other emphasis. I know some people claim
that that should be conveyable by use of language, and I hope I'm able
to do that to _some_ extent - but we're not all Hemingway or Shaksper;
some of those who write to me (more from businesses than privately!)
certainly aren't!

Presumably your script fails for some characters - I don't mean just
accents, but for example where someone's used Wingdings - "J" for smiley
(you probably hate those too), and ")" instead of "Tel:", for example.

I often find a _well_ done WP document easier - and often more pleasant!
- to read. (Thinking about why, just one reason is that layout,
emphasis, etc. make a short-term impression on my brain, so that if I
take my eyes off the document for a moment [say to cross-check something
it says], I can find my place better when I carry on reading it.)

Granted, I prefer PDF to .doc if I'm not going to edit the text myself,
though that's mainly to do with less accidental change probability,
which will be due to my default PDF handler being read-only whereas my
default .doc (and .docx) handler is Word.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

I don't see the requirement to upset people. ... There's enough to make fun of
without offending. - Ronnie Corbett, in Radio Times 6-12 August 2011.

In message , Mayayana
writes:
"Shadow" wrote

| I use RTF, as it keeps the images and formatting... and can be
| printed or "saved as PDF" if I want to email it.

I've occasionally used that for things like help files.
Bu for most uses I only need the text. If I'm saving
something from an email, an online article, etc, the
text is all that matters. I don't want a DOC or RTF or
EML or PDF to save a friend's flight information so I
can pick them up at the airport. I just want TXT.

_For that sort of thing_, I agree. (What's more, a lot of the time the
information's presentation in some other form - web page, whatever -
makes it _difficult_ to extract as text: the text comes out in the wrong
[or at least a different] order to how it appears. My blind friends
notice that particularly.)

If I actually need to create a "document", like a
contract or business stationery, then I'll use Libre
Office.

Another odd thing about RTF: I don't know what
it is, but the display always looks cheap to me. Fonts
are not crisp looking. Color options are limited unless
you customize the code. Not as polished as other file
formats.

I know what you mean! It used to have the advantage that at least anyone
with Windows could edit it, as (I think) it's the native format of
Wordpad, which comes with Windows (and for a "free" WP is a lot better
than it's given credit for - in fact, if it wasn't for compatibility
issues, I'd say is sufficient for many users' needs). And there are
people who _don't_ have Office (or one of the free alternatives - people
who aren't computerate enough to get one). But Word, in at least some
cut-down form, is now tending to be on all (Windows anyway) machines, so
that's less relevant than it used to be.

So if I want font
and formatting options, for something like a help file,
I'll usually choose HTML. I especially like the fact that

Not that I've written any, but for help files I rather like the old (and
now deprecated by Microsoft - you had to fetch a reader to read them,
from XP onwards I think) help file format.

images can now be base-64 encoded inline. So one single
HTML file can be read by anyone, and have pictures
embedded. I keep a script on my desktop for converting
images. The one downside is that support for inline
images has been slow to be supported. Older versions
of IE don't handle it and some older browsers are limited
to a small data size.

Interesting. (My old Turnpike can handle truly embedded-in-the-text
images in email and news postings, but hardly any [I don't know of any]
other mail/news clients can, so I've learnt to attach any images - or
other attachments - at the end when sending. [Other clients _appear_ to
embed images in text, but they actually put them at the end, putting a
_link_ - such as "cid:" - in the text where the image is to go. Or, of
course, these days, don't include the image at all, but a link to its
location online.]) I hadn't known about the ability of HTML to embed
images: is that HTML 6 or something? Yes, that ability to not need a
cluster of files is sometimes attractive: it was one of the few things
about Internet Explorer that Netscape/Firefox lacked (and may still),
the ability to save a web page as one file. (I don't know how it did it,
or whether that file could then only be opened in IE.)

--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

I don't see the requirement to upset people. ... There's enough to make fun of
without offending. - Ronnie Corbett, in Radio Times 6-12 August 2011.

In message , Mayayana
writes:
[]
Of course, 100 years from now no one will be able to
figure out what all those things mean...

"Thanks to a generous grant, we have at least determined
that the file contains, among many other things, a message
that reads, in Pre-Civility English, 'I want you inside me'. We
speculate that this may have been a prayer to some unknown
deity. The other content, mostly undecipherable, may have
been some kind of offerings to said god. One file is marked
with a word, 'authenticode'. We're guessing that was probably
a recording of devotional music. Perhaps 'authenticode' should
actually translate to 'the one true [authentic] god'.
It all indicates that these people were probably highly intelligent
and deeply religious. There was also an image of a woman's pelvic
area. We don't know the meaning of that. Perhaps the god was
a fertility god? We're working on getting more funding for
further study of this fascinating and groundbreaking artifact."


Beautifully done! (Nice digs at archaeologists/sociologists, too.)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

More people watch live theatre every year than Premier League football
matches. - Libby Purves, RT 2017/9/30-10/6

On Thu, 20 Feb 2020 08:12:39 -0500, nospam wrote:

In article , mechanic
wrote:


One day file extensions will be outdated and machines will work out
how to display the data from a file without the preconception
inherent in assigning a file extension.

that day was back in 1984 with the original macintosh and classic mac
os, which did not use file extensions.

mac os x, being based on unix, does use extensions.

No we don't need extensions in UNIX, but try and open an image file
in vim!

On 2/19/2020 8:55 PM, Mayayana wrote:

I don't see any point to .doc, either, in most cases.
Word processors are for writing business letters that
will be printed. I actually keep a script on my desktop
to convert doc to txt.


Word processors are for writing *many* different kinds of documents, not
just business letters.


--
Ken

In article , mechanic
wrote:


One day file extensions will be outdated and machines will work out
how to display the data from a file without the preconception
inherent in assigning a file extension.

that day was back in 1984 with the original macintosh and classic mac
os, which did not use file extensions.

mac os x, being based on unix, does use extensions.

No we don't need extensions in UNIX,

yes we do. change the extension and things break.

for example, rename a .tar.gz to .jpg, a .html to .png., a .pdf to .cc,
or remove the extension entirely and see how well it works out for you.

but try and open an image file
in vim!

what were you expecting to happen? auto-convert to ascii art?