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A new PNG spec

(www.programmax.net)
615 points bluedel | 1 comments | 24 Jun 25 13:01 UTC | HN request time: 0.404s | source
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joshmarinacci ◴[25 Jun 25 15:55 UTC] No.44378719[source]▶
A fun trick I do with my web based drawing tools is to save a JSON representation of your document as a comment field inside of a PNG. This way the doc you save is immediately usable as an image but can also be loaded back into the editor. Also means your downloads folder isn’t littered with unintelligible JSON files.
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tomtom1337 ◴[25 Jun 25 16:40 UTC] No.44379250[source]▶
Could you expand on this? It sounds a bit preposterous to save a text, as json, inside an image - and then expect it to be immediately usable… as an image?
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1. chown ◴[25 Jun 25 16:49 UTC] No.44379377[source]▶
Save text as JSON as comments but the file itself is a PNG so that you can use it as an image (like previewing it) as they would ignore the comments. However, the OP’s editor can load the file back, parse the comments, and get the original data and continue to edit. Just one file to maintain. Quite clever actually.