sz3
maybe webApp can output gif to share?
When I first found out about this project I was excited, but I realized that it is not a traditional static QR code and I didn't find a sharing solution. Do I think it is possible to share via gifs?
The issue is file size. Compression (zstd) is built into the format, but compression can only help so much. The reason cimbar works (imo) has a lot to do with the ephemeral nature of the frames -- we create one, show it on screen, and throw it away and move onto the next -- which allows it to sidestep the issue of the size of the encoded image.
That said, the cimbar cli can output pngs, and those image files can be combined into a gif. But the gif might be larger than the initial file!
While I completely understand that the resulting GIF might be larger, I believe this solution can still be very useful. Perhaps storing images as separate PNGs could be a better approach than using a single GIF. Imagine a sheet of paper as an alternative to CDs or DVDs. However, it raises an interesting question: what portion of the PNGs can be lost while still allowing the file to be successfully restored?
@sz3 Thank you for your great work on this tool!
However, it raises an interesting question: what portion of the PNGs can be lost while still allowing the file to be successfully restored?
This will depend on how many redundant frames we generate -- for over-the-air data transfer we use a multiple of the data size(e.g. "4x") to limit the chance of encountering duplicate frames: if we're already decoded a frame, seeing it again doesn't help us. For offline usage, whether shared as a gif or on paper, too many extra frames seems like a bad idea (too much redundancy is waste), so I've tended to assume 10-20% redundancy is ok. That is, the number of frames is the bare minimum + 20% extra, so we could afford to skip/lose 20% of the encoded frames (any of them) and still decode.
Another use case for GIFs is for tunnling data. For example (I know this has been done better, this is an example), uploading a cimbar GIF to a video site.
