2006.06.08 23:22 "Re: [Tiff] libtiff writes zero valued tile offsets and byte counts", by Joris Van Damme

Mark,

Mark R. Olin wrote:

> then the guess is possible is it not?

Without investigation of Photoshop source code, anything's possible. Hower, two things to note here:

1) There is such a thing as damaging, too farfetched guesswork. 1a) One bad consequence of such guesswork, is that people who don't actually bother to really double-check the output of a new writer but are satisfied with (some) interoperability testing, produce increasing numbers of bugs. An example of this, is the default subsampling value correction for JPEG compression in TIFF, as implemented in LibTiff, especially since warnings were traditionally hard to manage with LibTiff in any environment with more complexity then a single-TIFF-session command line stderr like setup. A bad writer designed could be writing incorrect subsampling values, test the results with LibTiff, conviniently not see warnings, and conclude the job's well done. 1b) Things get worse if the 'guesswork' that corrects some mistakes in files, renders correct but less common files incorrectly. One example of this is the handling of ExtraSamples in the LibTiff RGBA interface in current CVS. If an extra sample is correctly stated as unspecified, it is incorrectly interpreted as alpha by LibTiff RGBA interface. Even in images where the color samples are followed by some extra samples correctly stated as unspecified, and next an extra sample correctly stated as alpha, still the first extra sample is incorrectly taken to be the alpha channel. All of this is, I believe, a consequence of trying to auto-correct the case where a single extra channel that is like to be alpha, is not specified by the ExtraSamples tag. 1c) All such guesswork, for a codec coding point of view, is like a 'hack on top off' the actual design. Such hacks have a tendency to cummulate over time, complicate further developement, and result in unforseen bugs. One example of this is, again, the subsampling values correction in tif_jpeg.c that badly interfers with the setup of a LibJpeg decoding/encoding session so as to result in the wrong type of session in some unforseen circumstances.

All in all, I'm not saying auto-corrective guessing is wrong. I'm saying it should be thought through carefully in a specific case-by-case manner, and there certainly is such a thing as taking it too far. I'm also saying that was is best for a specific user, or even for a specific library, may not be best for the file format support and community that depends on the ambigious degree of correctness in files-out-there as a whole.

2) Chris noted earlier, that Photoshop does *not* correct missing offsets. See http://www.asmail.be/msg0054869483.html. In my personal humble opinion, that's a good thing, since that would defenetly qualify as 'taking it too far'.

Best regards,

Joris Van Damme
info@awaresystems.be
http://www.awaresystems.be/
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