2007.07.04 18:51 "Re: [Tiff] BigTIFF extension", by Toby Thain

On 4-Jul-07, at 3:13 PM, John Aldridge wrote:

On Wed, 04 Jul 2007 17:56:38 +0100, Kemp Watson <kemp@extelligence.net> wrote:

Besides, if a user tries to open a BigTIFF file with a regular TIFF tool, they will need to get a BigTIFF tool no matter what the file extension is.

The real question here is what error message is presented?

Obviously it will never be the best message: "This is a BigTIFF file, please upgrade to a version which supports BigTIFF".

I would hope that the design of BigTIFF means that the messages are not simply "Cannot open. File is corrupt", but rather something like "file uses an unsupported compression algorithm".

I think there's more to it than that... it's about arranging that file-open dialogs offer an appropriate list of files. The advantage of a changed suffix is that non-BigTIFF compliant applications can offer

    TIFF files (*.tif,*.tiff)

whereas ones which do support BigTIFF can offer

    TIFF files (*.tif,*.tiff,*.btf)

and in each case the user is only offered those files which the application can process.

But only if BigTIFF is *never* named *.TIF.

--Toby

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