Since it was announced in 1987, if they mentioned the pronunciation it was soft G. The inventor and CompuServe would tell you it was soft G. CompuServe’s applications would tell you if soft G in their docs.
It’s even in the documentation of PNG which came out 7 years later that says soft G is correct in GIF, and they wanted people to pronounce PNG as “ping”, not “pinj”. (Yes, really)
FWIW, in the 80s & 90s, everyone I knew pronounced it with a hard G, including folks at computer shows, which my family used to go to frequently.
To me, the soft g ‘jif’ pronunciation is the new Internet fad, not the other way around.
https://www.olsenhome.com/gif/compuserve-big.jpg
Since it was announced in 1987, if they mentioned the pronunciation it was soft G. The inventor and CompuServe would tell you it was soft G. CompuServe’s applications would tell you if soft G in their docs.
It’s even in the documentation of PNG which came out 7 years later that says soft G is correct in GIF, and they wanted people to pronounce PNG as “ping”, not “pinj”. (Yes, really)
See https://www.olsenhome.com/gif/ for more examples.