1994.02.11 01:09 "Re: LibTIFF working on MS-Windows 3.1.", by Richard Minner

• Ability to write both II and MM type tiff images. Yes that's right you can write little and big endian images using the library.

Agree that it could be able to write both types.

The code is able to write both types, but it insist to write the endian type the hardware reports.

However it does not have any practical use since the standard says that a product should be able to read both formats.

If not, they should not be allowed to tell that they support TIFF...

That is a bit legalistic I'm afraid. In reality there are probably hundreds or thousands of little programs that "support TIFF", and many are non-commercial. Many of those will not bother to implement both byte-orders for read, and if you only produce the other order, they will not read your files. Those programs indeed do not "really" support TIFF as specified, but the program owners have broken no law or contract in providing incomplete support!

Thank you for your many fine comments, and code suggestions.

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Richard Minner rtm@island.com {uunet,sun,well}!island!rtm
Island Graphics Corporation Sacramento, CA (916) 736-1323