2004.12.15 04:30 "[Tiff] Q: Fax photometric", by Chris Losinger

2004.12.18 18:40 "Re: [Tiff] Q: Fax photometric", by Joris Van Damme

They may do this because some TIFF files are created with the wrong setting and users complain.

They may do this because 'it seems that these popular applications always assume the normal case'.

Food for thought, I think. Your universal reasoning 'it's not a bug, it's a compatibility feature', consistently results in propagating the bug. In the end, we'll need a specification and an extensive bug list overriding that specification in order to ensure data exchange. Unfortunately, some will consider the spec the actual specification, and ignore your bug list. This way, your 'compatibility feature' reasoning results in incompatible codecs, and lots of data that one or the other considers corrupted.

This is why most think bug compensation can be a good thing in readers only, if at all possible, but no writer should ever be made to write in buggy ways for 'compatibility' reasons.

Furthermore, your reasoning 'we should keep the bug because users might complain', whenever posted in this list, is consistently the answer to at least one user complaining about the bug, instead.

Chris, I believe you should make an entry in the bugzilla interface. I will first check CVS, and, if still necessary, do the same for the IPTC tag datatype bug, when I get around to it.

Joris Van Damme
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