On Fri, 01 Dec 2006 18:12:50 +0100, Ilmari Karonen nospam@vyznev.net wrote:
Nathaniel wrote:
I hope this is the right place to ask this question: is there a technical reason for not hosting TIFF files on Wikimedia servers? Commons forbids them, and apparently has since the beginning. However, it would be helpful for Wikisource if TIFF files of scans of public domain works could be uploaded and used for proofreading and/or archival.
What do you need TIFF files for that PNG can't handle?
I'm genuine interested; there are things the TIFF format can do that PNG can't, but I'd like to know which features you need and why.
I would guess the ability to include multiple "pages" in one file. If you scan a 1000 page book most document scanners will let you save it as a single multi-page TIFF file, and that is a heck of a lot easier to upload than 1000 PGN images would be.
Converting to PDF seems like a easy workaround for that though. Not quite sure why TIFF's are outright banned on Commons, security conserns maybe (it's aparently a bit prone to buffer overrun attacks)? As far as I can tell there are no licensing or patent issues with the format.