1999.11.26 02:19 "Re: tiffcp", by Tom Lane

I must be missing something here. Where is there a spec for ZIP compression in TIFF?

There is no spec for it --- Sam implemented it in libtiff on his own authority (as a protest against the Unisys LZW business). I do not know if anyone else followed his lead.

If Adobe hadn't been stifling TIFF spec updates for the last six years, I'm quite sure there *would* be something about ZIP in the spec by now. There was already considerable unhappiness in the TAC about LZW's not- freely-usable status when TIFF 6.0 was issued, and Unisys' antics since then would certainly have forced some action. ZIP seems about the best unpatented lossless method out there, so it's probably what would have been adopted. (Burrows-Wheeler is coming up fast on the outside, but I think the decision would have been made before B-W came along, if there had been an active TAC to make it.)

regards, tom lane