Stephen E. Wilhite has died

https://www.megiefuneralhome.com/obituaries/Stephen-E.-Wilhite?obId=24311617#

by Shared404 • 4 years ago

98 68 4 years ago

brtkdotse• 4 years ago

Oh no, how sad. The jraphics interchange format shaped internet culture as it exists today.

It isn't uncommon for letters in an acronym to be pronounced differently from they are in the words they originated in. eg: laser, scuba, and NASA aren't pronounced "lah-seer", "scuh-bah", "nay-sah".

qwertox• 4 years ago

It's not like GIF/JIF is pronounced "G I F". Like "Laser" isn't pronounced "L A S E R".

bigDinosaur• 4 years ago

I wouldn't be surprised if certain accents result in exactly the sounds you described. Good point regardless though.

zote• 4 years ago

His favorite jif [0] https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23338558/2... [0]

m4632• 4 years ago

Haven't seen the dancing baby in a while...

Daneel_• 4 years ago

On the GIF/JIF debate:

Every word (except gin) that starts with G, then a vowel, then an F, is pronounced with a hard G. For example: Gaffe. Gift. Guff. Guffaw.

Most one-syllable words that start with G have a hard G (not an exhaustive list): Gab. Gad. Gag. Gal. Gam. Gap. Gas. Gay. Get. Gig. Gill. Gimp. Gird. Girl. Git! Give. Go. Goal. Gob. God. Gone. Gore. Got. Guide. Guild. Guilt. Gull. Gulp. Gum. Gun. Gust. Gut. Guy.

The word "gift" is the closest word to GIF, and it has a hard G. To pronounce GIF, just say "gift" without the "t".

jwiz3• 4 years ago

The thing is, he named it. So he gets to say how it is spelled and how it is pronounced.

You don't call the Spanish exchange student "Gee-Suss", you call him "Hey-soos", because it's a name.

zzleeper2• 4 years ago

Nah, once it's out there people can do whatever they want with it, in the same way that once "xerox" became a common word, it wouldn't matter if Xerox Corp. came and said "hey btw it's pronounced as ZEROZ".

RamblingCTO• 4 years ago

But "Hey-soos" is wrong as well ... Listen to it here: https://www.google.com/search?q=how+do+you+pronounce+spanish...

int0x202• 4 years ago

But GIF is an acronym

drdeadringer• 4 years ago

So is ASAP, and there are people who say it as a word ["A-Sap"] as well as people who verbally spell it out ["A-S-A-P"].

veltas3• 4 years ago

except gin

Gin is all I need to be convinced honestly, and where I come from that's a more frequently used, relevant word than everything else you listed.

m4632• 4 years ago

I wonder if we should let "git" follow this rule, sometimes.

charcircuit2• 4 years ago

Etymology wise it inherits that from the sound of "gen" from "geneva." Since GIF is a new word it can't inherit a pronunciation from a former spelling.

chaboud• 4 years ago

Would you pronounce it “Grin-drrrrr” because you just want to normalize to a hooked-on-phonics view of pronunciation while using a language that is a crash-merge of proto-Germanic and French with a sprinkling of centuries of colonial cultural appropriation?

“GIF” is like a brand. It’s a spec; a proper noun. As such, it has a clearly intended pronunciation that was unambiguously provided by the creator. That guy is dead now, so he may not notice, but try honoring his intentions for a day.

Everyone who gets dogmatic about “I don’t care what the spec is like” just comes off seeming to me like old Englishmen who quite clearly intentionally mispronounce non-English words (except French, which they relish…).

It used to be that the only folks I knew who pronounced this out of spec were my parents and grandparents (because the didn’t know better and were computer illiterate). Now, somehow, we have rafts of people who have adopted the posture of my parents in the 90s with pride.

I imagine that the next 24 hours will see a lot of these sorts of discussions…

cafard• 4 years ago

An argument of pure genius!

deelowe• 4 years ago

The pronunciation is intentionally odd. It’s a play on an old advertising tagline.

It was “choosy developers choose gif”

agloeregrets• 4 years ago

For those who don't know: "Choosy Moms choose Jif" (Peanut Butter) Obviously, they don't use that marketing anymore.

keithnz2• 4 years ago

the word gin is closest to grin, maybe we should say gin without the "r"....

these arguments are really bad, there is no real rule to follow, especially for an acronym. Anyways...

this gent was a gem, a real gentle giant and genius.... these debates are like germs and generate generic retorts, lets be more genuine.... I hope you are getting the gist of this comment.

paul_f• 4 years ago

GIF is an acronym pronounced as a single word. Jee-Eye-Eff. Hence, 'jiff'. You can tell who knows what GIF means by how they pronounce it.

pclmulqdq• 4 years ago

My SCUBA gear begs to disagree with you. So does my LASER pointer.

makeitdouble• 4 years ago

You make it sound like word pronunciations are logical, follow rules, behave similarly to other words that are close in origin or in writing.

That’s not how it works. That’s like trying to convince someone who names his son “Richard” how the last letters are supposed to be pronounced. There’s no amount of debate you could have that actually makes any progress one way or another.

51Cards2• 4 years ago

From the man himself:

  There has been a huge debate about the real pronunciation of GIF over the years and many users have continued to offer their own arguments.

  But in 2013, Steve settled the debate once and for all during his acceptance speech of his lifetime achievement Webby Award, revealing that GIF is pronounced with a soft “g”.

  “It’s pronounced JIF, not GIF,” the beloved creator revealed to the crowd.

donohoe• 4 years ago

While I ascribe a lot of respect and authority to the creator (Stephen, not Jod), the community that uses it now has (mostly) determined otherwise.

pohl• 4 years ago

settled the debate once and for all

That's hilarious. The bulk of the debate happened after he weighed in.

Giraffix Interchange Format.

cryptonym• 4 years ago

Every word (except gin) that starts with G, then a vowel, then an F, is pronounced with a hard G.

No F in gin. Giraffe, no hard G. Closest word doesn't work for many reasons. It's an endless debate.

Thank you for this Stephen!

Andrew_nenakhov• 4 years ago

In Russian, it is decisively "гиф", with hard g, like gift.

ar_lan2• 4 years ago

The word "wine" is the closest word to "win", and it has a strong "i". To pronounce "win", just say "wine" without the "e".

sedatk5• 4 years ago

GIF could be the oldest file format standard that's remained popular and yet unchanged. I wrote about it here: https://twitter.com/esesci/status/1506776119441170432

ChrisLomont4• 4 years ago

Besides ASCII text files....

TAR files from 1970s? ROFF from the 1960s is still used to create and maintain Unix man pages for all flavors of Unix. MIDI from 1983 is older than GIF....

CSV dates from 1972?

sedatk5• 4 years ago

TAR & ROFF have been through changes, GNU variants/extensions etc. MIDI and CSV too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma-separated_values#History

GIF89a has been exactly the same since 1989.

Plaintext obviously is the only exception, and I'd already emphasized that in my tweet.

adrianmonk• 4 years ago

Maybe mbox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbox), the Unix email message data file format? It hasn't changed much in a really long time, but it's also extremely simple.

Also the diff/patch format (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diff) is almost as old as GIF, but Wikipedia says unified diff support was added in 1990-1991.

ataylor284_• 4 years ago

It remained unchanged for over 30 years, but there are actually two versions of the GIF file format. The second revision, known as 89a, added a few minor refinements like a frame rate for animations and transparency (but only binary, e.g. fully opaque or fully transparent).

PNG could arguably be seen as GIF 2.0, since it addressed the major shortcomings of the format. But since PNG had no animation capability, it could never fully replace GIF which held on for that one niche use.

sedatk5• 4 years ago

Yes, I started the count from GIF89a. It's still the oldest unchanged format.

zzleeper2• 4 years ago

In case anyone knows, was this related to antivaxxing? With three doses, mortality rate is pretty low now.

veltas3• 4 years ago

Unfortunately I know people that have died fully dosed, from COVID. The mortality rate has always been "low" but it's higher among very elderly, and especially among men.

I think it's bad taste to start speculating if someone dies from COVID whether they were part of some kind of ideological group that put themselves more at risk, he's actually part of a group that is just inherently more at risk.

robbiet480• 4 years ago

He’s with Jod now

mihaic• 4 years ago

Thank you, I think you've won the argument.

veltas3• 4 years ago

I think the inventor of GIF deserves a black bar.

DaiPlusPlus• 4 years ago

Methinks HN should always include a brief who/why summary in their death-notice headlines - as much as I'd like to think we all already know who early leaders in tech are by-name, I'll admit the low-information "Stephen E. Wilhite has died" headline passed me by and while skimming HN I misread it as "Stephen Wile E. Coyote has died" and didn't care to click further.

...it wasn't until hours later when I was bored and idly reading everything that I saw that I earlier misread the title and learned the CompuServ/GIF connection in the HN comments.

pseudolus• 4 years ago

NPR story with more details: https://www.npr.org/2022/03/23/1088410133/gif-creator-dead-s...

hownottowrite• 4 years ago

I started at CompuServe in 1990. I met Steve a couple years later when I interviewed to join his team.

I didn’t make the cut and I thought he was a bit of a jerk during the interview. Turns out I was the jerk and Steve was actually being really kind to a kid who wasn’t even close to being ready for that level.

Anyway, what I can say is that Steve was a lot more than GIF. In fact, back then, no one really thought too much about it, but they thought a lot about Steve.

George Jones, another CompuServe alum, penned this a few years back. I think it’s a nice summary. https://web.archive.org/web/20220129204133/http://curious.ga...

Stephen E. Wilhite has died

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