MNG Documentation

The specifications for MNG (Multiple-image Network Graphics), MNG-LC (low-complexity subset of MNG), MNG-VLC (very low-complexity subset), and JNG (JPEG Network Graphics, also a subset of MNG) were written by Glenn Randers-Pehrson, with contributions from various others. As of version 0.995, the spec was officially voted on and promoted to 1.0 status (effective 11 January 2001); it is considered to be a solid, stable specification. (See the MNG applications page for a list of supporting viewers, browsers, editors and programming libraries.)

The MNG spec itself is considered the definitive version; MNG-LC, MNG-VLC and JNG are all derived from the main document and are provided for the convenience of implementors. One possible implementation path to the full specification would be to start with MNG-VLC (which is defined not to include JNG support), then upgrade to MNG-LC, then add JNG support, and finally fill out the remaining features in the full MNG specification. Note that MNG-VLC is not necessarily very interesting to content-creators, but it does allow for transparency support.

Also note that, in addition to the technical documentation below, MNG is described in Chapter 12 of PNG: The Definitive Guide. If the links below don't work, check here or here for a more recent copy of the spec. (At this time, there is no separate extensions document comparable to that for PNG.)

MNG specification, version 1.0 ("Draft 80")

 * HTML format:
 * US (California) or local mirror site (also in HTML 2.0 format)
 * US (Texas)

 * ASCII text:
 * US (California) or local mirror site
 * US (Texas)

 * US letter-size PostScript:
 * US (California) or local mirror site
 * US (Texas)

 * Portable Document Format (PDF):
 * US (California) or local mirror site
 * US (Texas)


MNG-LC specification, version 1.0 (extract from MNG spec)

 * HTML format:
 * US (California) or local mirror site (also in HTML 2.0 format)
 * US (Texas)

 * ASCII text:
 * US (California) or local mirror site
 * US (Texas)
 * Japan (Japanese translation of version 0.97)

 * US letter-size PostScript:
 * US (California) or local mirror site
 * US (Texas)

 * Portable Document Format (PDF):
 * US (California) or local mirror site
 * US (Texas)


MNG-VLC specification, version 1.0 (extract from MNG spec)

 * HTML format:
 * US (California) or local mirror site (also in HTML 2.0 format)
 * US (Texas)

 * ASCII text:
 * US (California) or local mirror site
 * US (Texas)

 * US letter-size PostScript:
 * US (California) or local mirror site
 * US (Texas)

 * Portable Document Format (PDF):
 * US (California) or local mirror site
 * US (Texas)


JNG specification, version 1.0 (extract from MNG spec)

 * HTML format:
 * US (California) or local mirror site (also in HTML 2.0 format)
 * US (Texas)

 * ASCII text:
 * US (California) or local mirror site
 * US (Texas)

 * US letter-size PostScript:
 * US (California) or local mirror site
 * US (Texas)

 * Portable Document Format (PDF):
 * US (California) or local mirror site
 * US (Texas)


The ISO 8859-1 character set (also known as "Latin-1") is used by both PNG and MNG.

ISO 8859-1 character set

[ISO 8859-1 character set]

 * Plain text:
 * US (California)
 * US (Texas)

 * PNG image (721 x 785; 8179 bytes):
 * US (California)
 * US (Texas)

 * JPEG image (721 x 785; 52937 bytes):
 * US (California)
 * US (Texas)


PNG documentation has its own web page.


Here are some other MNG-related resources at this site:


[primary site hosted by SourceForge] Last modified 11 January 2015.

Copyright © 1998-2015 Greg Roelofs.