LibTiff Mailing List
TIFF and LibTiff Mailing List Archive
January 2010
Previous Thread
Next Thread
Previous by Thread
Next by Thread
Previous by Date
Next by Date
Contact
The TIFF Mailing List Homepage
This list is run by Frank Warmerdam
Archive maintained by AWare Systems
Thread
2010.01.19 22:50 "Re: eta for bigtiff support?", by <ccox@adobe.com>
This was discussed several years ago. The consensus was: TIFF/TIF and use the same MIME type. There is no perfect answer to this question, but using TIFF/TIF and the same MIME type does seem to create the fewest hurdles to adoption. Chris On 1/19/10 8:15 AM, "Bob Friesenhahn" <bfriesen@simple.dallas.tx.us> wrote: On Mon, 18 Jan 2010, Phil Harvey wrote: > On 15-Jan-10, at 12:00 PM, tiff-request@lists.maptools.org wrote: >> What's wrong with "image/tiff" and "TIF"? GIF doesn't have different >> MIME types and extensions for its different versions. > > > This has been debated before, and probably will be debated > again, but my opinion is that a new file type is needed. > > Technically, according to the TIFF 6 specification, the 0x002a > in the TIFF header is a file identifier. So this can not > be used as a version number because any file with a different > number is not a TIFF file according to the specification. > > This is different than GIF, which defined "87a" as a version number > in the original specification. Older GIF readers (such as the gif2tiff that comes with libtiff) are not able to read newer version GIF files. My feeling is that calling BigTIFF a new format will cause more harm than good. Many existing applications will be able to read BigTIFF files by simply building with a newer version of libtiff. Regardless, I do agree it is a new format. Bob -- Bob Friesenhahn bfriesen@simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/ GraphicsMagick Maintainer, http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/