Still confused about RAW & TIF

(Paul Mitchum) wrote:
Floyd L. Davidson wrote:
(Paul Mitchum) wrote:
jeremy wrote:

As a short-term format, RAW is fine. But there is considerable fear that
RAW formats will not be supported over long time horizons. [..]

I'd challenge that. I'd say that RAW formats are no more or less in
danger of lack of support than anything else. It'd be nice if there was
an open standard that camera manufacturers could adopt, but short of

Actually it is an entirely *bogus* argument. There is virtually *no* risk
whatever that the various RAW formats will not be "supported" at any time
in the future. They *certainly* will be.
....

We're really speaking the same language, because the situation for TIFF

Exactly. There is *no* risk for any of them, or for TIFF.

[..]
Obviously a standardized RAW file format will have *no* significance at
all in those respects. On the other hand, only a *very* well crafted
standard would see far enough into the future to know what every company
will need in 20 or 30 years. Which is to say that if such a format
actually did get widespread adoption it could possibly impede development
of any technology that would require an extension to the standard, which
is *not* a good thing.

I seriously doubt that last premise. It's incredibly easy to make a
backwards-compatible update to a file format, even one arrived at by
committee. :-)

I don't think that is necessarily true. It may be easy to come
up with such an addition, but coming up with only one (rather
than none or many) is not easy. If the "one true extension" is
never adopted, technical development suffers; but if many
extensions are adopted... we have many standards and it is no
different than no standard (other than slower to implement).

In fact, this ties back to your argument about dcraw: Someone has to
update dcraw for every new RAW format. Why is that a better strategy
than extending an open file format as needed?

Wrong question. Why do we need a "standard" if there is no
difference? As it is we get archival support that will be
available forever; but there is no administrative bureaucracy to
slow down the process of technical development.

--
Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)