LibTiff Mailing List
TIFF and LibTiff Mailing List Archive
April 2006
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
2006.04.19 19:26 "Re: TIFF + Group4 will last 10 years?", by Glenn Widener
> > I'm working in a digital preservation project for the Portuguese > > National Archive. Currently we need to migrate a bunch of images created > > in a previous digitization project to a new physical support. The images > > have 2 colors (Black and White) are in TIFF format with Group4 > > compression. These images are going to be stored in a safe way until > > 2013, preferably in TIFF format (with or without compression). > > Why not use PDF/A then? It's an ISO standard for long term > archival storage of electronic documents. See > <http://www.aiim.org/article-pr.asp?ID=30413> for details. I'd rather ask, why use PDF/A? No reason. It's at least an order of magnitude more complex than TIFF, to no benefit, particularly for mononcrome images (unless you need to include searchable text or embed arbitrary metadata in your image file). PDF/A is new, relatively unproven, and exists to solve problems with PDF as an archive format. TIFF will be around FOREVER, and since reading it is trivial, will always be readable on any machine to be invented in the future, as long as it can read the bits in the file. I want to start a discussion on this list around the question: If you were to invent an extension to TIFF called "TIFF/A", to add functionality that PDF/A has and TIFF lacks, what would you add and how? I'm interested in embedded text, general metadata, JBIG2, maybe big files. -- Glenn Widener SwiftView Tools Product Manager SwiftView Inc. - quality PCL/TIFF portable document tools and services www.swiftview.com Work: (971)223-2621 Cell: (503)351-1178