Hoi,
John you are right. TIFF can be everything you describe. The question I am left with what is your point to this? Material is scanned without compression by GLAM, we get it per standard as TIFF files, we restore them. When the material is compressed, we do not restore them. We need to retain the original to demonstrate provenance. It is  problematic to have files nobody can see in a standard way. This is why we need TIFF support, because otherwise we are likely find an admin who starts deleting this essential material.
Thanks,
      GerardM

2009/9/13 John Vandenberg <jayvdb@gmail.com>
On Sat, Sep 12, 2009 at 6:52 PM, Liam Wyatt <liamwyatt@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 12, 2009 at 8:41 AM, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Yes, 100MB is not big even for single paged documents. The biggest file we
>> want to upload but cannot is over 600 Mb. Obviously they are a minority.
>> Thanks,
>>       GerardM
>>
> Yes, 600Mb files will indeed be the minority of TIFF files - for a few years
> yet at least :-) And, even then, TIFF files will be in the minority relative
> to JPG. *but* what makes supporting the TIFF format so important for the
> purposes of working with museums and galleries is that it demonstrates that
> we can do very good work (and take professional care of) their high quality
> images. If we can only support compressed formats then the museums and
> galleries can quite legitimately ask us why would we want high-res files. At
> that point it returns us to arguing over pixel-widths...

Wrong.  TIFF is a container format.  The contents in a TIFF file can
be compressed or uncompressed, losslessly or lossy.

PNG/MNG is a container format.  It can also have compressed or
uncompressed, losslessly or lossy.

DJVU and PDF can also contain compressed or uncompressed chunks,
losslessly or lossy.

> So, not only is
> supporting lossless file formats good for WikiSource texts and good for
> image restorationists, it is also good for our future negotiations with
> museums and galleries.

TIFF support is good for future negotiations because it means that we
don't need to argue with them about which file formats are better, or
concern ourselves with the feasibility of transcoding large
collections.

--
John Vandenberg

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