2021.09.28 21:48 "Re: [Tiff] Proposal to create a OGC BigTIFF standard", by Joris Van Damme

Kemp,

To my knowledge, the community that was behind the BigTIFF specification is now effectively Leica (medical, not Geosystems).

Incorrect. Leica, as a company, was only involved in that they were one of four sponsors of the BigTIFF implementation inside LibTIFF. They were completely unrelated to the design. It's possible a number of people that contributed to the design in the mailing list were employed by Leica at the time, but if so they were not speaking for that company.

The initial specification came from Ole Eichhorn, then at Aperio, a digital pathology company which was acquired by Leica.

No. Original specification was a community effort, on the mailing list, and to this day you can read up on that and verify it in the mailing list archive. Aperio, at that time, had an alternative design, partly incompatible, that they put into an independent implementation, without consulting the community. It made things quite awkward for a while. They still own bigtiff.org. I hope that at least the stuff they offer on that site is no longer incompatible with our own specifications, but I haven't checked.

The involvement of Aware systems as far as I know was only hosting a discussion on their mailing list

Incorrect. AWare Systems is me, Joris Van Damme. I actively contributed to the design phase quite a bit, though it truly was a community effort. I also did the implementation in LibTIFF, sponsored by four other companies.

Various stabs at this for multiresolution imaging have been made over the years

The SubIFDs tag allows for any number of any resolution child ifds. It's a specification totally independent from BigTIFF, SubIFDs can and should be used in classic TIFF and BigTIFF. You're not making sense.

I can go on correcting your other statements, but I fail to see how that's worth the effort at this point. It's ancient history. Why spin these things, what is your angle?

Given that GeoTIFF and COG specifications exist, what is OGC intending to add beyond that? Is it just the "64-bit"ness, or metadata?

Like the man said, it is the BigTIFF part, so, sure, the "64-bit"ness. BigTIFF is just TIFF with 64bit offsets, by design.

I feel the current activity in the GeoTIFF community is a good thing that will surely result in more widespread BigTIFF adoption, and more widespread confidence in its validity and the fact that it's here to stay. Even, thanks for letting us know.

Best regards,

Joris Van Damme
AWare Systems