• AnyOldName3@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        The format was originally designed to interchange animated palettised depictions of giraffes, so Giraffic Interchange Format made sense. They just changed the acronym when they realised that by storing different colours in the palette, you could depict things other than giraffes.

        • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 month ago

          Giraffic Interchange Format made sense

          In no world does that collection of words ring true, regardless of context.

          you could depict things other than giraffes

          But why would you?

          • neidu3@sh.itjust.works
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            1 month ago

            GPUs were originally created to render giraffes faster, hence the name. The fact that they’re also useful for gaming are as coincidental as their usefulness for crypto mining and LLMs.

            A gif is just the output format after running loads of OpenGiraffeLib code through a GPU.

          • gon [he]@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            1 month ago

            Well, it’s not the P that’s read like an F, it’s PH that’s read like an F. If it was jpheg it would be read jfeg.

              • 5765313496@lemmy.world
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                29 days ago

                I didn’t downvote either of you, but here is why I disagree. The P is inseparable from the H in this situation. I would pronounce the P as half of a PH if I could, but “puh” is nothing like the first half of the sound “phuh”.

                • Chronographs@lemmy.zip
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                  29 days ago

                  I’m just realizing that they must be gettinf the ph from the P in JPEG standing for Photographic. I’m guessing the argument is that gif is pronounced like gift (germanic root) vs giraffe (latin/italian) because graphics has a hard g. But if gif was a word there’s obviously some people who would pronounce it that was, if jpeg was a word, we probably wouldn’t say Jay-pehg but nobody would pronounce the p like a ph so there’s no need to resort to the component words of the acronym.