2004.10.01 07:22 "[Tiff] BigTIFF extension issue", by Joris Van Damme

2004.10.04 14:54 "Re: [Tiff] Re: BigTIFF extension issue", by Bob Friesenhahn

If we 'overload' the extention ".tif", we help the user as they will assume correctly it is an image file. If we introduce a new (especially cryptic e.g. .tf8) extention the users do not associate it with an imageformat.

In that case I suggest that we use the extension ".png" since it has been in use for less time than ".tif" and therefore the associated image application is more likely to be maintained and somewhat more likely to be able to read the BigTIFF file.

Maybe when the new extention is descriptive enough. e.g. .bigtif (english speaking) users will understand it. Lucky for us most OS's today can work with long extentions. However seen a lot of discussion on this topic I currently prefer to stick with the ".tif" extention, as users will associate correctly with it. Application should hide the details of the implementations.

With Microsoft Windows we are blessed with an operating system which supports long file names, but only looks at the first three characters of the file extension when it decides what to do. In this case a ".bigtif" exension would be treated as the extension ".big" by Windows.

Bob

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