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October 2000
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2000.10.06 13:50 "Re: Old-style JPEG and HP 9100C Digital Sender", by Frank Warmerdam
Joris Van Damme wrote: > > > Adobe have been suppressing a ready-to-go TIFF 7.0 spec for quite a > > few years now. I have heard well-informed opinions that Adobe see TIFF > > as a competitive threat to their proprietary PDF spec > > Yeah well, that's exactly why I said before and will repeat here that if > someone wants to keep tiff alive (SAM!), that someone should not wait > for the Adobe TIFF 7.0 spec because that's waiting for tiff to die!! > > MNG can support multi-page. AFAIK, MNG does not support color spaces > other than RGB (but the RGB gamut is about as wide as any, and MNG does > support 16bits per channel), nor does it support tiled storage, for > example (but these storage modes seem to add more complexity to tiff > than usefullness sometimes). > > Maybe MNG will replace tiff, maybe it won't, but my point is this: if we > just sit here and wait for Adobe to do something, tiff will sooner or > later vanish, because that is exactly what Adobe is waiting for. Now > there are people with enough credibility in the tiff community to do > something about that, and I mean the libtiff people and Sam for > starters. I think and repeat, again and again, that these people should > publish their own TIFF 7.0 spec. Who cares if that is not the official > spec? It's like money: the majority will accept it, and that is why it > will be acceptable. Joris, I am not sure who would be up to publishing a whole TIFF V7.0 specification, but I think a first step would be to write up some proposed ammendments for work that has been done - essentially more tech notes. Two items that come to mind for me are the addition of SAMPLEFORMAT_COMPLEXINT/COMPLEXIEEEFP, and the deflate (aka zip) compression scheme. What all sorts of things do people want to put in a V7.0 spec? Assuming we were trying to do something minimal what really needs to be done? Do you bring this up mainly in the hopes of settling the "OJPEG" issue once and for all? If we really want to extend TIFF significantly we should really try to bring a few of the major software vendors onside (folks who sell imaging libraries like ImageGear) and major software vendors like ... Microsoft, Corel, etc. Finally, I don't think we need to worry about TIFF being replaced by anything else too quickly. It is a stable and popular format. But even if it did fade in importance, is that the end of the world if some new format is able to what needs to be done? Best regards, ---------------------------------------+-------------------------------------- I set the clouds in motion - turn up | Frank Warmerdam, warmerda@home.com light and sound - activate the windows | http://members.home.com/warmerda and watch the world go round - Rush | Geospatial Programmer for Rent