A new PNG spec

A fun fact about PNG, the correct pronunciation is defined in the specification

> PNG is pronounced “ping”

See the end of Section 1 [0]

0: https://www.w3.org/TR/REC-png.pdf

Because the creator of gifs telling the world how he pronounced it made such a huge difference :)

Not sure I'll bother to reprogram myself from “png”, “pung”, or “pee-enn-gee”.

I've said "jif" for almost 40 years, and I'm not stopping anytime soon.

Hard-g is wrong, and those who use it are showing they have zero respect for others when they don't have to.

It's the tech equivalent to the shopping cart problem. What do you do when there is no incentive one way or the other? Do you do the right thing, or do you disrespect others?

Linguistic prescriptivism is wrong, and people who promote it are showing they have zero respect for others when they don't have to.

I agree that language is fluid. However, when it comes to names, I think people should have enough respect to pronounce things how the creator (or owner, depending on the situation) of the name says it should be pronounced. Too often people will mispronounce someone's name as a sign of intentional disrespect (see Kamala Harris for a fairly recent prominent example) and I cannot get behind that. You see a similar disrespect in the hard-soft discourse around the pronunciation of GIF. A lot of people use the hard g and mock the creator for thinking that soft g should ever have been right.

Naming is probably one of the few language areas that I think should be prescriptive, even while language at large is descriptive.

If the creator insists on a weird pronunciation, because of an inside joke most won't ever get, then I feel no responsibility in humoring them.

The G in gif is for graphics. Not 'giraffics'. And most people in the world have no idea what Jif even is, much less a particular catchphrase from an old ad campaign that barely even connects.