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.
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.
