Talk:TIFF

Compression usage and support

How is the compression usage and support calculated?

I understand that the ZIP (zlib / deflate) compression is quite popular (here marked as "Uncommon"), although I'm unable to measure it. Which methodology was used to set this column of the table? When was it done? Should it be reviewed? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vini.sch (talk • contribs) 15:26, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

The non-standard value 0x80b2 for tag 259 is uncommon and obsolete, the standard value 8 should be used instead and for value 8 the table says that support for and usage of this tag value are common. The comment common or uncommon refers to the tag value, not what's behind it, although that could be made clearer. 2A02:A461:E1E:1:21B:FCFF:FE75:6ADE (talk) 15:55, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

The .svs suffix

I see that a ".svs" file name suffix can indicate a tiled TIFF format. Would someone who knows what they are talking about add mention of this suffix to the article at an appropriate place? Thanks! —Quantling (talk | contribs) 15:28, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Tag/Tagged

@Quantling, I noticed you reverted @Jojo-schmitz's edit which changed Tag to Tagged, and subsequently edited many pages to expand the acronym as Tag Image File Format. Your citation for this revert was this page on Adobe.com. And since Adobe owns the copyrights, who can argue with that, right? Well, I believe it is not so simple, as can be seen by this other page on Adobe.com that uses Tagged rather than Tag.

From 2005-2020, this article used Tagged. It was only with this edit in 2020 by @Dclunie that we changed to Tag.

If we look at the specs, we see version 4.0 from 1987 uses Tag, but version 5.0 from 1988 declines to expand the acronym, as does version 6 from 1992. If we take those specs at their word, the acronym has no official expansion.

But the Adobe specs aren't the only specs that mention TIFFs. RfC 2302 from 2002 uses Tag, as do RfCs 2301, 3949, 3950, 2306, and possibly more. But RfC 1314 slips and calls it Tagged (despite calling it Tag in its own references section - interestingly, it references version 5.0, the only text of which I can find does not have the title that the RfC gives it).

What about other reliable sources? The Library of Congress calls it Tagged and notes that both Tag and Tagged are in circulation, and that the title page of the 1992 specification does not spell out the abbreviation. It goes on to cite Wikipedia, at which point we should probably consider the issue of WP:CITOGENESIS. Wikipedia is influential. Perhaps our longstanding use of Tagged has influenced this page.

The UK National Archives unequivocally calls it Tagged. Other notable organisations in the Tagged camp include Mozilla, NASA, Microsoft, and Apple

But wait, Apple are also in the Tag camp, as are Microsoft.

What about a broad survey of general usage? I see 646,000 Google search results for "Tagged Image File Format" and 75,100 for "Tag Image File Format". Google Scholar returns 19,500 and 2,990 respectively.

What about Wikipedia readers? Page view analysis shows that readers overwhelmingly use the Tagged Image File Format redirect rather than the Tag Image File Format redirect.

What about the plain sense or style of the thing? To my ear, "Tagged Image File Format" makes a lot more grammatical sense than "Tag Image File Format". What's a tag image anyway?

In conclusion, I think that while Tag was clearly once the official usage, subsequent spec revisions have not endorsed this and there is now no official usage. In terms of common usage in sources, I think there is clear evidence that both usages are valid, with Tagged perhaps edging ahead due to its far greater usage in scholarship and being more grammatically sensical.

How to handle this in the lead sentence? We could write Tag/Tagged Image File Format, or Tag(ged) Image File Format, or perhaps omit any expansion of the acronym, but my preference would be to return the article to its longstanding pre-2020 lead and simply write Tagged Image File Format. The history of the name can come later in the article body. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 23:00, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for your research! It is definitely more complicated than I realized. I would like to see both versions in the TIFF article because they are both used (WP:COMMONNAME). However, I think it would be awkward to use both on other pages. I would defer to using the article's name, "TIFF", which is neither "Tag Image File Format" nor "Tagged Image File Format". So maybe other pages should say merely "TIFF". (The TIFF article's name is not written in stone of course; you could propose a page move.)

FWIW, I think of "tag image" vs. "tagged image" to be similar to "color image" vs. "colored image"; all sound good to my ear and they are fine in their respective contexts. But I don't see it as all that relevant what your ear or mine says. More importantly, we need to look to WP:COMMONNAME and similar policies. —Quantling (talk | contribs) 02:00, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Talk archive

There is a fairly large archive for this Talk page at Talk:TIFF/Archive 1, but there is no link at the top of this page to guide the reader to it. Can somebody fix this? GrindtXX (talk) 12:11, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

OK, I've added a Talk header template, which seems to have fixed the problem. GrindtXX (talk) 13:19, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

"ScanScope Virtual Slide" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect ScanScope Virtual Slide has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2026 March 13 § ScanScope Virtual Slide until a consensus is reached. 1234qwer1234qwer4 18:53, 13 March 2026 (UTC)