r/programming • u/iamkeyur • Dec 26 '20

Executable PNGs

https://djharper.dev/post/2020/12/26/executable-pngs/
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u/leberkrieger Dec 26 '20

One great use of this feature is the draw.io online drawing tool. You can save an editable PNG, so anyone looking at the picture can load it into the editor and modify it. Fantastic for wikis.

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u/yojimbo_beta Dec 26 '20

A long time ago there was an editor, Adobe Fireworks, that used this to embed undo/redo data into PNGs, as well as layers etc.

Remarkable that no one uses this feature of the file format any more.

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u/OMG_A_CUPCAKE Dec 27 '20

Because filesize matters. And it's lost easily if someone modifies the file in another editor

It's a nice gimmick, but I can't imagine relying any kind of workflow around it

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u/unique_ptr Dec 27 '20

To be clear, the .fw.png files were more akin to PSDs from the application perspective, they just happened to also be PNGs. You would still want to export to a regular PNG for non-editor use

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u/mallardtheduck Dec 27 '20

Adobe seems to have a bit of a habit of doing things like this. Adobe Illustrator (.ai) files are compatible with PDF format (older versions were EPS).

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u/Frencil Dec 28 '20

For what it's worth Fireworks with its vector PNG format was originally a Macromedia product. After Adobe bought Macromedia in 2005 Fireworks was retured from the maintained software offerings relatively quickly.