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July 2007
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2007.07.09 16:25 "Re: BigTIFF extension", by Gary Mcgath
Stephen Carlsen wrote: > Probably most of the arguments for and against using a different > extension have now been stated and re-stated.* > > So maybe it would be enlightening to inject a possible compromise > position into the discussion. I don't love it, but I don't totally > hate it, either. > > Most of use can use filenames longer than 8.3 these days. So how > about agreeing on a convention to use a 2-part file extension for > BigTIFF files: ".x.tif" or some such thing. That way users (and tech > support people, and developers) have some immediate clue that this is > a BigTIFF file -- which could save significant tech support costs and > headaches over the next N years of transition. There's no precedent for this in file format extensions, and I think it's overloading the concept to start devising compound extensions. Most existing software would simply look at the ".tif" ending and ignore anything else. > * (My own first preference is still to consider these to be 2nd > Generation TIFF files -- TIFF for a new millenium, if you will -- and > use a new extension such as ".tf2".) I would also prefer a different extension, whatever it might be. But extensions don't provide a lot of granularity, and can't really be considered reliable type identifiers. I'd settle for having a separate MIME type for BigTIFF. There's already one for TIFF-FX (image/tiff-fx), and BigTIFF arguably deserves it even more. -- Gary McGath Digital Library Software Engineer Harvard University Library Office for Information Systems http://hul.harvard.edu/~gary/index.html