Christoph Hormann <chr### [at] gmxde> wrote:
>
> Tiff support is indeed something that could use improvements very well -
> not only as far as the 32 bit float variant is concerned - 16 bit
> integer is currently not supported either (although it is trivial to
> convert from PNG of course) - just like grayscale variants i think.
> This is of course not only meant for the output but also for input
> (while more than 16 bit is rarely necessary there it can be convenient).
>   Of course for reading the endless number of tiff variants that exist
> makes it quite difficult.

After seeing OpenEXR in there, I'm almost wondering if TIFF input support
isn't a bit of a third leg, especially given the library compilation
issues. Is there anything TIFF can do, that the other supported formats
can't do better and in a more standardized form---at least for the set of
features that POV-Ray can use?

It seems to me that one could realistically discuss deprecating (and
eventually dropping) TIFF support from POV-Ray, to move away from what has
always been a problematic format (and library). Image map files could be
converted to another form without any loss in the process. Of course,
backward compatibility with old scenes would be an issue, and I'm not aware
of what the policy is on this beyond the #version source-compatibility
directive.

Post a reply to this message