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January 2010
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2010.01.19 18:55 "Re: eta for bigtiff support?", by Toby Thain
On 19-Jan-10, at 11:15 AM, Bob Friesenhahn 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. I'm very reluctant to weigh in because I know the issue has been discussed at length in the past, but it should be remembered that thousands of applications don't use libtiff. --Toby > 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/ > _______________________________________________ > Tiff mailing list: Tiff@lists.maptools.org > http://lists.maptools.org/mailman/listinfo/tiff > http://www.remotesensing.org/libtiff/