Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

(www.theverge.com)

669 points danso | 1 comments | 20 May 20 19:36 UTC | HN request time: 0.204s | source

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crazygringo ◴[21 May 20 16:55 UTC] No.23260987[source]▶

I thought iOS was supposed to convert HEIC images to JPEG automatically behind-the-scenes in any file transfer situation where HEIC isn't supported. The article itself even says:

> iPhones convert HEICs to JPEGs automatically when they’re attached to emails in the Mail app

I'm just curious technically why the same didn't happen with the testing portal? If you have a webpage that accepts image uploads, is iOS Safari not smart enough to do the same conversion?

Or was the portal programmed badly or in a non-standard way that that couldn't happen? Or is there a way to do it that the developers ignored?

Just curious for the technical details of who's more to blame here -- Apple not providing enough backwards compatibility, or the testing portal being designed poorly.

Because blaming students for not following obscure instructions to change their phone's overall configuration is not the right path. A national testing portal ought to support the default image format taken by the world's most popular phone, period.

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oefrha ◴[21 May 20 17:08 UTC] No.23261216[source]▶

>>23260987 #

Tried a standard input tag with the proper accept attribute

  <input type="file" accept="image/jpeg,image/png" />

Selected a HEIC file from Photos in Safari, the selected image was automatically converted to JPEG.

Ten bucks says College Board programmer(s) failed to do the most basic and standard filtering.

Edit: Like a sibling comment said, the accept attribute actually isn't necessary; even PNG images (e.g. screenshots) from Photos are converted to JPEG automatically. This is true on both macOS and iOS Safari (latest). To be clear, on macOS you need to select from Photos instead of the filesystem for this to take effect.

In case anyone's interested, source code you can use to test for yourself (a Flask app):

app.py:

  import flask
  
  
  app = flask.Flask(__name__)
  
  
  @app.route("/", methods=["GET", "POST"])
  def index():
      if flask.request.method == "POST":
          image = flask.request.files["image"]
          return f"uploaded {image.filename!r} ({image.mimetype})"
      return flask.render_template("index.html")

templates/index.html:

  <html>
    <head>
      <meta charset="utf-8" />
      <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1" />
    </head>
    <body>
      <form method="post" enctype="multipart/form-data">
        <input name="image" type="file" required />
        <input type="submit" />
      </form>
    </body>
  </html>

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dragontamer ◴[21 May 20 18:00 UTC] No.23262200[source]▶

>>23261216 #

> Ten bucks says College Board programmer(s) failed to do the most basic and standard filtering.

Why is it a failure of the college board to put "accept="image/jpeg"", instead of iOS which failed to default to the more standardized jpeg format when HEIC was not specified?

HEIC is a newer format which fewer systems support. iOS / Safari should default to JPEG in this case.

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1. derefr ◴[21 May 20 20:18 UTC] No.23264517[source]▶

>>23262200 #

Because a lack of an accept attribute on the file-input element has a defined meaning in HTML, and that meaning is accept="⋆/⋆".

Which, in turn, means that the form isn't putting any constraint on what's being uploaded at all, and so there's no reason to think that the form is asking for an image in the first place. At that point, it's asking for a file. Any file. And so it has the semantics of taking whatever file you provide it as-is, with no transformation necessary. Just like when a client requests `Cache-Control: no-transform` from a server. It wants the thing on the other side sent to it as-is.

And, it's important to support those semantics (and that particular implicit meaning for leaving out the `accept` attribute), because such "as-is" uploads have many use-cases. The form might be e.g. a computer-forensics or antivirus-signature portal, that wants an evidence file; or the interface to a hex editor or decompiler, that expects a raw binary with arbitrary extension in unknown format; or the SCP component of an old web SSH terminal emulator. All these existed on the web, and used <input type="form">, before the `accept` attribute was introduced. So "not using the `accept` attribute" has to retain semantics that are backward-compatible with that legacy.

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