2007.08.24 21:08 "[Tiff] A few libtiff4 changes", by Frank Warmerdam

2007.09.20 21:03 "[Tiff] libtiff4, and the size of STRIPOFFSETs and TILEOFFSETs", by Frank Warmerdam

Joris, and others,

I discovered a problem today with GDAL's use of libtiff4. The problem occurs because libtiff decides as it is writing directories whether to write fields like TILEOFFSETs as LONG (4byte) or LONG8 (8byte). However, my code depends on the questionable assumption that I can rewrite a directory after altering (only) the tile/strip offset and size values.

This apparently used to be true, but now it may happen that the offsets switch from using LONG to LONG8.

How important is this dynamic behavior?

I have taken the liberty of changing tif_dirwrite.c so that for BigTIFF files the tile/strip sizes and offsets are always written as LONG8. (r1.58 of tif_dirwrite.c) in order to resolve my GDAL problems.

I have done so by altering the semantics of TIFFWriteDirectoryTagLongLong8Array(). I believe it used to write the array of values as LONG if possible, otherwise write as LONG8 (if values are too large). Now it basically just writes as LONG for classic tiff, and as LONG8 for bigtiff. It also does some checking to confirm that larger than LONG values aren't being written to classic tiff.

If the dynamic sizing of these tags is considered important then I can consider other approaches. Perhaps some sort of flag I can set at runtime to get the "biggest size" behavior I need. But if this is just intended to be a small space savings in file sizes I think it would be simplier and safer to just write strip/tile offset/size values in "big" form for bigtiff.

PS. I see the following when building now. At least one of these used to be used, but I altered things. But a bunch have never been used. I'd also like to remove the unused code. It would cut down on warnings as well as code bloat.

tif_dirwrite.c:902: warning: 'TIFFWriteDirectoryTagByte' defined but not used
tif_dirwrite.c:950: warning: 'TIFFWriteDirectoryTagSbyte' defined but not used
tif_dirwrite.c:1046: warning: 'TIFFWriteDirectoryTagSshort' defined but not used
tif_dirwrite.c:1142: warning: 'TIFFWriteDirectoryTagSlong' defined but not used
tif_dirwrite.c:1190: warning: 'TIFFWriteDirectoryTagLong8' defined but not used
tif_dirwrite.c:1212: warning: 'TIFFWriteDirectoryTagSlong8' defined but not used
tif_dirwrite.c:1266: warning: 'TIFFWriteDirectoryTagFloat' defined but not used
tif_dirwrite.c:1311: warning: 'TIFFWriteDirectoryTagDouble' defined but not used
tif_dirwrite.c:1451: warning: 'TIFFWriteDirectoryTagShortLongLong8Array' 

defined but not used

Best regards,
--
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I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam@pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam

and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGeo, http://osgeo.org