LibTiff Mailing List
TIFF and LibTiff Mailing List Archive
October 2004
Previous Thread
Next Thread
Previous by Thread
Next by Thread
Previous by Date
Next by Date
Contact
The TIFF Mailing List Homepage
This list is run by Frank Warmerdam
Archive maintained by AWare Systems
Thread
2004.10.01 18:03 "Re: BigTIFF extension issue", by Chris Losinger
> While LibTiff does not yet support BigTIFF, it could be very easy to
> nevertheless update it to already recognize at least the BigTIFF header
> already, and return the appropriate error message you mention here,
> instead of a generic 'not a tiff file' - ish error. Since many apps
> stay reasonably up to LibTiff date, that should already come a long
> way towards meeting your wish.
But not all apps use LibTiff; and not all that use LibTiff are
going to be able to upgrade to the latest version (ex. I'm still stuck at
3.5.7 because of EXIF issues).
Introducing a new incompatible TIFF-ish format, while using the
same file extension as classic TIFF is only going to anger users who don't
understand why their favorite reader can't open this "Foo.Tif" file they
got from their co-worker. Then, at best, they'll complain to the software
vendor who might not even know that there's even such a thing as BigTIFF;
at worst, they'll decide the software is simply broken and move on to
something else.
Why even consider creating such headaches?
JPEG2000 didn't try to piggy-back on the ".JPG" extension, and
we're all thankful for it.
-c
__________________________
Chris Losinger
Smaller Animals Software, Inc.
http://www.smalleranimals.com