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.
It is recommended that images 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 8859-1 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)
FOTW standard colours
are listed on the FOTW Colour Guide, although modern
flag production commonly results in other shades.
The height of the images on FOTW pages is normally constrained to 216 pixels
with slight exceptions to allow for variable stripe widths (e.g., US national
flags at 221 pixels = 13 x 17 pixels). Flags can be provided at heights up to
432 pixels, but will be rescaled to 216 pixels for display (you can click on the
image to see the full size). For vertical flags, up to a ratio of 2:1, a width
of 216 pixels is recommended. Very tall or very long flags will be resized to
fit most screens.
Images should only be as large as necessary to properly show the details and
the colours. Use 72 dpi
(standard screen scale) as the image definition if possible, though many drawing
programmes do not allow you to change it.
The rules state a maximum of five messages a day. We recognize that some
people collect messages over a period of time and submit them in a block. In
that case do not submit any more than ten messages at a time - readers soon lose
interest when faced with a deluge of messages. Most mailers have a setting where
you can delay the transmission of messages automatically - use it, if you have a
lot to send.
Images should be posted as attachments to your message. Your mail
should give some explanation about the flag and 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.
