1999.11.30 23:07 "Re: libtiff 3.5.3 release.", by Martin Bailey

Unfortunatly, the compression removal means that saved image size has grown dramatically. Without a change in the TIFF spec to support another lossless compression format, this is unavoidable.

The library can use zip for lossless compression (thanks, Sam!), but as this is not part of the spec, TIFFs using zip compression may not work with other software.

At present the only specification for ZIP in TIFF would appear to be the code in LibTIFF, so only applications built around LibTIFF will support ZIP.

If somebody were to produce a text specification, akin to the draft tech note 2 that defined the used of Compression=7 for new format JPEG, then it's possible that more software would be written to support ZIP in TIFF.

I realise that this reinforces a two-level specification, which is not a good thing, but it may also provide a little pressure in the right places for things to be moved on in a more 'official' way.

Regards

Martin Bailey

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