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

2004.10.01 18:03 "Re: [Tiff] 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