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Peanut butter brand Jif has put forth their opinion on how to pronounce GIF.
From their website(warning, lots of animated GIFs):
When is it OK to call a Gif a "Jif"? Never.
Jif® is peanut butter. GIFs are
looping animations.
SNACK ON THAT.
That would be all well and good except for just one thing. The person who actually created the format, Steve Wilhite, explicitly stated GIF was to be pronounced with a soft "G"!
From a 1997 edition of the NetBITS newsletter, down near the bottom of the page appears:
It's "Jiff" and I Don't Want to Hear Another Word -- Logic may dictate the "g" in GIF (Graphic Interchange Format) is pronounced hard, like gift or gefilte fish, but that didn't stop dozens and dozens of readers from offering opinions, many of them hilarious.
However, several people wrote to say that they either worked with folks at CompuServe or read the original GIF specification, all of which specified a soft "g". None of us at NetBITS understand why we haven't seen the definitive word before, so here it is. Charlie Reading <charlier@kreber.com> writes:
I worked with the creator of GIF (Steve Wilhite) when I was still employed by CompuServe. Steve always pronounced it "jiff" and would correct those who pronounced it with a hard G. "Choosy developers choose GIF" (spinning off of a historically popular peanut butter commercial).
An article at Ars Technica actually queries professional linguists in pursuit of the ultimate answer.
See this Sesame Street-like GIF which mentions popular words that start with a soft G such as Giant and Giraffe.
Lastly, here is a short video (1m18s) with what is quite possibly the strongest affirmation of all. David Karp presents Steve Wilhite with the 2013 Lifetime Achievement Award at the 17th Annual Webbys where Steve dramatically uses a GIF as his acceptance 'speech' and sets the matter straight once and for all.
Not that it settles anything. The debate will rage on like vi vs. Emacs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 27 2020, @11:52AM (15 children)
telling other people how to pronounce something is either stupid or a joke.
(and I regard the "*I* pronounce Linux as Linux" as the joke kind)
I will continue pronounce gif as gif, not at jif
the big issue here is why anyone would still use the .gif format?
I thought we got rid of that like 20 years ago?
(and I assume webm is ok if someone have a strange need for small soundless animations)
Anyways, I can assure you I'm neither a jiffer nor a jiffee....
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday February 27 2020, @12:00PM
/ɡaɪf/
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(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday February 27 2020, @12:16PM (6 children)
Those who really love freedoms said "fuck patent laws, I don't need any pee-enn-ghees, I'm sticking with GIFs, don't tread on my file formats!"
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1, Redundant) by tangomargarine on Thursday February 27 2020, @03:13PM (5 children)
Your post was made a lot more confusing when you reversed the formats later on.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by FatPhil on Thursday February 27 2020, @09:56PM (4 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday February 28 2020, @03:54PM (3 children)
So your argument is, purposely violating the patent laws by using a closed format is a better way to exercise freedom than using the format that was open and unencumbered in the first place?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by FatPhil on Sunday March 01 2020, @05:34AM (2 children)
Why are you telling me what the argument I've just spelled out to you is?
Did you run your finger under the text as you read it out?
Thanks for the downmod, by the way. Gimme another.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday March 02 2020, @04:34PM (1 child)
To make sure I'm actually understanding what it is. Obviously I failed the first time around.
Should you really be throwing stones in this area? I assume you're the one who modded me Redundant in the first place.
I mod people Flamebait when they call other posters names or otherwise insult them without other useful content in their posts.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by FatPhil on Tuesday March 03 2020, @08:09AM
Yes, which explains your derpy response to it that added nothing to the discussion apart from noise.
> I assume you're the one who modded me Redundant in the first place.
Yes, and now you almost appear to appreciate why; if not, reread the first two lines of this post again, until you do.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Thursday February 27 2020, @12:25PM (3 children)
the big issue here is why anyone would still use the .gif format?
It would be very usefui for logos, icons, line drawings, maps, and especially charts. However, it seems like instead everyone runs those items through several stages of lossy JPEG compression to make sure that the compression artifacts are blatantly obvious on all screen sizes, resolutions, contrasts, and lighting conditions. Many of those purposes would be better met by SVG but not only is support lacking, both for creation and display, but SVG can carry malicious scripts.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 27 2020, @01:09PM (2 children)
ouch!
why the heck would anyone want javascript in a picture format!
Now I have to look for info about that security problem too :-(
I assume the browser (palemoon on my own computer) normally won't run those scripts either since I normally have javascript turned off, but sometimes I do turn on javascript for a page - how do I make sure it never ever run scripts in svg-pictures?
and here I was hoping browsers support of svg was a problem solved...
But I guess people can use png for their logos/icons/linedrawings instead, while we wait some 18 more years or so for vectorgraphics in browsers.
If I'm not completely mistaken some websites do a really horribly thing of pushing their own special fonts on you for their icons :-(
so now you can't block their ugly fonts or the symbols break.... blaeh!!!!
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday February 27 2020, @01:30PM (1 child)
You can do some fun things with JavaScript in SVG.
Is sanitizing it really that hard? All of the scripting should be contained in script elements or a handful of attributes (onload, onclick...).
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(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday February 27 2020, @04:38PM
Proposal to the W3C to bless a new SVG extension that allows native code as alternative to JavaScript.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday February 27 2020, @03:10PM (1 child)
You also gave another reason to keep saying it the way he doesn't like:
We don't pronounce it Jraphics Interchange Format, after all.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday February 27 2020, @04:33PM
Giraffes would approve of a Giraffics Interchange Format.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday February 27 2020, @04:36PM
Modern software, using way more cpu cycles than would have seemed reasonable in the 90's, makes it possible to encode short video clips, using amazing dithering, into animated GIF files. No special video player is needed. OMG, gasp, and no JavaScript! Yet the animation is quite good quality for a short clip.
In the 90's GIF animation was for "cartoonish" animations.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.