>
>BTW Most TIFF output suffers the same IP problem as GIF, ie it uses
>the patented LZW compression method. Future versions of Gimp and XSane
>may not be able to write such TIFFs, though they will still read them.
>
TIFF supports quite a number of different compression schemes, but
support for them is often fairly limited. Normally these schemes are
implemented by a libtiff.so share library, so Gimp and XSane really
need not concern themselves with whether the library supports LZW
or not. Some people actually do have a license to use LZW compression
so applications should leave it open. An application can make all
the known compressions available as options, and if the library does not
support a particular compression then it will fall back to none.
No compile/link-time decision is necessary.
Also, TIFF has a few features that are essential for any serious graphics work,
for example, the ability to record the original resolution, and an
ICC profile tag. Loss of information is never a good idea, and
the lowest common denominator is not always the best. Although the PNM
utilities are handy, it is necessary to save TIFF tags (I use tiffget)
and reinsert some of them after manipulation (via a modified pnmtotiff).
Then again, TIFF does have way too many tags.
-John Witford
-- Source code, list archive, and docs: http://www.mostang.com/sane/ To unsubscribe: echo unsubscribe sane-devel | mail majordomo@mostang.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat May 13 2000 - 04:09:38 PDT