2014.10.15 04:10 "[Tiff] tiff2pdf page ordering", by Richard Nolde

I think the problem lies in how the page number tags are being written in the tiff file.

As I understand it, and see in TIFF files from dozens of makers and models in our image processing environment, the Page number values represent the page sequence number and, optionally the total number of pages in the file. It is permissible to have zero for the total number of pages, particularly if the TIFF file is being written on the fly without knowing how many pages will end up being written.

tiffinfo 123.tiff | grep Number
  Page Number: 0-1
  Page Number: 0-2
  Page Number: 0-3

It should produce something like the following if you don't know the total number of pages at the time of writing

tiffinfo 123.tiff | grep Number
  Page Number: 0-0
  Page Number: 1-0
  Page Number: 2-0

OR
 the following if you buffer all your pages in memory until you know how
many you will have in the file.
tiffinfo 123.tiff | grep Number
  Page Number: 0-3
  Page Number: 1-3
  Page Number: 2-3

You can look at the code for writing TIFFTAG_PAGENUMBER in tiffcp or tiffcrop.

Poking at a file produced by one of our Ricoh based scanners produced the following output:

tiffinfo /archive/testimages/latest/20141008145637343.tif | grep Number
  Page Number: 0-158
  Page Number: 1-158
  Page Number: 2-158
  Page Number: 3-158
  Page Number: 4-158
  Page Number: 5-158
  Page Number: 6-158
  Page Number: 7-158

---
  Page Number: 157-158

Given what you are writing into the PAGENUMBER tag, the qsort must be reordering the output.

Richard Nolde

tiffinfo 123.tiff

TIFF Directory at offset 0xe6 (230)
    Image Width: 344 Image Length: 287
    Resolution: 120, 120 pixels/inch
    Bits/Sample: 1
    Compression Scheme: CCITT Group 4
    Photometric Interpretation: min-is-white
    FillOrder: msb-to-lsb
    Orientation: row 0 top, col 0 lhs
    Samples/Pixel: 1
    Rows/Strip: 287
    Planar Configuration: single image plane

  Page Number: 0-1

TIFF Directory at offset 0x2a8 (680)
    Image Width: 344 Image Length: 287
    Resolution: 120, 120 pixels/inch
    Bits/Sample: 1
    Compression Scheme: CCITT Group 4
    Photometric Interpretation: min-is-white
    FillOrder: msb-to-lsb
    Orientation: row 0 top, col 0 lhs
    Samples/Pixel: 1
    Rows/Strip: 287
    Planar Configuration: single image plane

  Page Number: 0-2

TIFF Directory at offset 0x484 (1156)
    Image Width: 344 Image Length: 287
    Resolution: 120, 120 pixels/inch
    Bits/Sample: 1
    Compression Scheme: CCITT Group 4
    Photometric Interpretation: min-is-white
    FillOrder: msb-to-lsb
    Orientation: row 0 top, col 0 lhs
    Samples/Pixel: 1
    Rows/Strip: 287
    Planar Configuration: single image plane

  Page Number: 0-3

pdfinfo 231.pdf

Producer:       libtiff / tiff2pdf - 20120922
CreationDate:   Tue Oct 14 17:53:07 2014
ModDate:        Tue Oct 14 17:53:07 2014
Tagged:         no
Pages:          3
Encrypted:      no
Page size:      206.4 x 172.2 pts
File size:      3251 bytes
Optimized:      no

PDF version: 1.1