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Instructions for GIFfers

The instructions that follow (part of the mailing list rules) refer to the construction of images in GIF format, compiled by Jan Oskar Engene, as of 4 January 2000.

See also:

Instructions for Editors

Images should be in GIF format, unless you have a good reason for another format. A good reason could be sending an untreated scan, which should preferably be sent as a JPEG image file (jpg).
Names of images should be at most fourteen (14) characters long.
Use the two first characters of the file name to identify the country by using a digraph from ISO 3166 list of countries, and leave the third character to the separator (see rule 4). Use the remaining five characters to give a hint about the content. There is also a list for the sub-national entities of many countries (ISO3166-2). Please try to adhere to this list too as much as possible. If there is no ISO3166 code appropriate, use up to 14 characters.

After the digraph representing the country, as 3rd character of the file name, consider using a significant separator to give a hint of what kind of flag is shown in the image. These are the separators used:

symbol	meaning	symbol’s ISO 10494 code
-	sub-national territorial flags	45 (hyphen-minus)
~	ensigns, flags used at sea	126 (spacing tilde)
^	military flags	94 (spacing circumflex)
'	construction sheets	39 (apostrophe-quote)
$	commercial flags	36 (dollar sign)
@	sports flags	64 (commercial at)
}	political flags	125 (closing curly bracket)
)	coats of arms	41 (closing parenthesis)
(	maps	40 (opening parenthesis)
!	proposed or erroneous flags	33 (exclamation mark)
_	everything else	95 (spacing underscore)

Please use FOTW standard colours (see the FOTW Colour Guide for more information), unless a specific shade is reported or prescribed. In that case please use the most approximate Browser Safe Colour (RGB colours consisting of values 255, 204, 153, 102, 51 or 0), unless some other RGB value is reported or prescribed.
The height of the images should preferably be 216 pixels, or as close as possible.
Images should only be as large as necessary to properly show the details and the colours. Sticking to a palette of only 16 colours should be enough for most flags, unless you use dithering to smooth pixel ragging — for which a full 256 colour palette is usually necessary. Use also 72 dpi (standard screen scale) as the image definition, though many drawing programmes do not allow you to change it.
Do not send more than a total of 25 kb in one day in at most 5 images. If your images are larger than this, send them over more than one day to the group. If your image is much larger than 25kB, you can also consider sending it directly to FOTW web site Director Rob Raeside rob.raeside@acadiau.ca to be included in the web site without sending all the images to the list. He will inform the list on where they can find your images. Another possibility would be posting it somewhere else on the Internet where interested people can load it down. Yet another possibility would be to send out a message to the list stating that everybody interested can obtain a copy of the image from you off the list.
Images (binaries) should be posted using UUencode (either as attachment or as in line), so that as many people as possible, if not all, can view them.
Images should be posted apart from the message, with a hint in the subject-line saying that it contains an image (for instance the image file name). Your mail giving some explanation about the flag should contain a reference to the file name of the image.
If you are posting an image you did not make yourself, please quote the person who originally made the image. Also make sure that the image maker does not mind that you post the image to the list.