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> Does anyone know the origin and the precise meaning
> of the graphic file format TIFF?
According to MacUser, 1/94 pp.146-147:
TIFF. The Tag Image File Format
(TIFF) standard was codeveloped by
Aldus and other vendors as a way of
describing gray-scale images such as
scanned photographs. The format has
been updated to include support for color
images. TIFF is the most versatile, reliable,
and widely supported raster-image
file format available for the Mac.
TIFF represents a nearly classic case
study of what is right and what is wrong
about file formats, however. TIFF is ex-
tensible; that is , developers can register
proprietary tags with Aldus. TIFF is designed
so that if the application reading a
TIFF file doesn't recognize a tag, it skips
to the next one. However, every time a
tag is added to TIFF, a new flavor of the
format is created, s TIFF now has as
many different flavors as Baskin-Robbins
has flavors of ice cream. That situation
complicates things and occasionally prevents
an application from opening a TIFF file.
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Hope this is helpful.
--Seth Greenberg
seth -at- marketing -dot- nice -dot- com
Tel Aviv
