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Image MIME Reference
NAPLPS

North American Presentation Level Protocol Syntax

image/naplps
VS

Apple PICT Image

image/x-pict
PICT

A complete technical comparison of North American Presentation Level Protocol Syntax and Apple PICT Image — covering compression, feature support, browser compatibility, magic bytes, and when to choose each format.

Equal browser support

Feature Support

Feature NAPLPS PICT
Transparency (Alpha) ✕ No Yes
Animation Support Yes ✕ No
Progressive Loading Yes ✕ No
HDR Support ✕ No ✕ No
EXIF Metadata ✕ No ✕ No
ICC Color Profile ✕ No ✕ No
North American Presentation Level Protocol Syntax
image/naplps
Extension
.nap.naplps
Container NAPLPS Byte Stream
Compression Uncompressed (Tokenized ASCII Commands)
Algorithm
None (Coordinate encoding)
Color Depth 16-color palette (Indexed from larger color spaces)
Developed by ANSI / CSA (Based on Canadian CRC's Telidon)
Released 1983
Magic Bytes
1B (Variable / ESC sequences)
Full NAPLPS reference →
Apple PICT Image
image/x-pict
Extension
.pict.pct.pic
Container QuickDraw Metafile
Compression Uncompressed / Run-Length Encoding (RLE) / QuickTime Compressors (JPEG, SMC)
Algorithm
Apple PackBits (RLE)QuickTime Image Compression Manager (ICM)
Color Depth 1-bit, 2-bit, 4-bit, 8-bit (Indexed), 16-bit (High Color), 24-bit (True Color), 32-bit (RGBA)
Developed by Apple Computer, Inc.
Released 1984
Magic Bytes
None (Requires offset parsing, e.g., 00 11 02 FF at byte 522)
Full PICT reference →

Browser Support Comparison

Browser NAPLPS PICT
Chrome Chrome
✕ ✕
Firefox Firefox
✕ ✕
Safari Safari
✕ ✕
Edge Edge
✕ ✕
IE IE (Legacy)
✕ ✕
NAPLPS

NAPLPS Strengths

  • Extremely bandwidth-efficient, enabling colorful graphical interfaces over early 300 baud dial-up connections
  • Resolution-independent vector scaling allowed the exact same file to be displayed accurately on varied early PC monitors and television sets
Limitations
  • Completely obsolete and unsupported by modern web technologies
  • Relies heavily on stateful parsing and terminal emulators rather than straightforward file decoding
  • Easily misidentified by MIME sniffers as plain text or generic binary streams due to the lack of a standardized file header
PICT

PICT Strengths

  • Incredibly versatile for its time, allowing a single file to cleanly scale text and vector shapes while simultaneously housing raster photos
  • Served as the flawless universal clipboard format for the classic Mac OS, enabling seamless copy/pasting between wildly different applications
Limitations
  • Deeply tied to Apple's legacy QuickDraw graphics architecture, making it exceptionally difficult to write accurate third-party parsers on modern operating systems
  • Lack of a standard magic header makes file detection unreliable without seeking 522 bytes deep into the file
  • Completely unsupported in modern web environments and discontinued by Apple itself

When to choose which format

NAPLPS
Use NAPLPS when…
  • 1980s Videotex Services
  • Prodigy Online Service Graphics
  • Historical BBS Terminal Graphics
  • Legacy Teletext Broadcasts
PICT
Use PICT when…
  • Classic Mac OS Clipboard Data
  • Legacy Macintosh Desktop Publishing (Aldus PageMaker, QuarkXPress)
  • 1980s/1990s Digital Clip Art

More comparisons

NAPLPS vs ACES → PICT vs ACES → NAPLPS vs APNG → PICT vs APNG → NAPLPS vs AVCI → PICT vs AVCI → NAPLPS vs AVCS → PICT vs AVCS → NAPLPS vs AVIF → PICT vs AVIF → All comparisons →
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