2007.07.03 18:37 "[Tiff] BigTIFF extension?", by Phil Harvey
Thread
2007.07.05 13:40 "Re: [Tiff] BigTIFF extension", by Joris Van Damme
Andy,
Actually, I read it a little differently to you - I think there _is_ general agreement to use ".tif", that is to use the same extension.
I am thereore now proposing that we officially adopt ".tif" as the big tiff extension. To pass this vote, the four people on the committee need to agree:
- Bob Friesenhahn.
- Joris.
- Frank Warmerdam.
- Chris Cox.
[I'm not saying anyone else isn't important, so please no-one get upset!]
If all those four people can respond that they are in agreement, you (Joris) can then update your web site to say it's official.
It doesn't work that way. For one, I'm pretty sure all four of these don't want to get promoted to committee. Secondly, there's people much deserving of a place in that list, but less visible most of the time, like Andrey and Stephen. Thirdly, even if people here would agree on a committee, just because we say 'the four people on the committee say yea, so it's official', doesn't make it so, as in reality the file format is owned by Adobe and not any alien committee... But it doesn't enjoy Adobe's priority, at most we see Chris making a statement from time to time, but though we respect him a lot it's not clear if he fully represents the owner, so that's where the real problem lies.
Well, actually, I'm a strong believer that file formats ought to be regarded property of a large community pyramid of programmers and users. They're 'out there', and that's consistent with the fact that many formats that aren't publically documented or suffer licencing issues usually fail to penetrate the market, especially in imaging. There's no firm 'top' in TIFF's owning 'programmer and user community pyramid', so we'll have to wait a bit and see how the true owners settle on extension in the end instead of having more firm guidance right from the start. My bet is that people will opt for '.tif', as the layer of application programmers will stumble upon many of the very practical points I laid out before and also they'll mostly realize that BigTIFF is TIFF. Indeed, as you say, there does seem to be some degree of agreement to use '.tif' already, in this particular layer of the pyramid. I strongly recommend people to anticipate the extension will de facto be '.tif', or they'll find themselves releasing a version that needs to be updated before it's useful.
Best regards,
Joris Van Damme
info@awaresystems.be
http://www.awaresystems.be/
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