2010.02.11 21:56 "[Tiff] TIFF and IJG JPEG 8", by Bob Friesenhahn

2010.02.22 16:17 "Re: [Tiff] Libtiff 4.0.0beta5 Released", by Bob Friesenhahn

  1. deadline for confirmation that ABI is stable, 21 March

I'm not sure what this means. The ABI is substantially altered compared to 3.9.x. I'm not aware of any need for near-future ABI changes.

The main concern I have at the moment is that while old code will mostly work with libtiff 4, code written based on libtiff 4 prototypes will not work with libtiff 3.X.X. This is a problem since libtiff 3.X.X will continue to be used for many years. The libtiff 4 API documentation documents the APIs using libtiff 3.X.X typedefs and does not match the prototypes for the libtiff 4 functions. I would like to restore many of these removed typedefs back into the libtiff 4 headers, even if they seem useless and quaint to some. It is possible that this issue is primarily in the area of the Client open code but I would have to check.

I think that it is safe to say that there has never been a peer review of the revisions made to the libtiff 4 APIs.

Bob or I could likely prepare a release candidate right now. I'm not really

I have in fact been thinking recently that it is time to return to prepare another libtiff release.

Certainly any libtiff maintainer who has the time and inclination should continue to integrate fixes from bugzilla into CVS.

Bob
--
Bob Friesenhahn
bfriesen@simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer, http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/