2000.11.23 20:06 "Using libtiff without reading from a file", by Wolfram Bettermann

I am wondering whether anyone on this list may have an idea for the following scenario:

I would like to use libtiff in a Window environment (NT, 2000). For our client/server enterprise solution we need to quicky decode TIFF images,coming from an IBM mainframe, and get it displayed on Windows based clients. The problem is, that libtiff needs for all of the API functions a file handle (fh), means you have to do I/O first before you can decode the TIFF image. What we would like to do, is passing the (TIFF) file contents as a blob of data for decoding directly to libtiff, without first reading it from disk.

One solution would before decoding the image (TIFFRBGA) to write the file temporarily to disk, get it decoded, instead passing the contents of the file as a blob directly to libtiff, than afterwards delete this file. But we are facing 1000 of requests per days on the webserver, which will feed the image to the clients(defragmentation and timing problems). It does not sound like a good solution.

Does anyone has an idea to pass the contents of the TIFF image directly to libtiff? I could not find any API functions which does that.

thanks for any input, I appreciate that.

Wolfram