TIFF and LibTiff Mailing List Archive, FAQ

Index

Question 1. How can I post in this list?
Question 2. Why is there no bad quoting style and such in the oldest messages? Did so many people really build clean and easily readable mails?
Question 3. Why is AWare Systems hosting this archive?
Question 4. Will you consider hosting any other archives as well?
Question 5. I find the LibTiff library and/or this archive useful!

Question 1. How can I post in this list?

Posting in this list is for subscribers only. While AWare Systems does host the mailing list archive, we do not actually host the mailing list itself. Here is the subscription page.

Question 2. Why is there no bad quoting style and such in the oldest messages? Did so many people really build clean and easily readable mails?

Our software does not change the actual text content of messages, that goes without saying. It does, however, impact formatting to enhance readability and search engine result relevance, and it's build with a rather broad definition of formatting.

In some cases this process of re-formatting is subtractive. For instance, redundant quotes of complete messages, quotes of signatures and bottom-quotes, when detected, are deleted. In other cases the process is more additive. For example, tiffdump output, when properly detected, is enhanced to link to the relevant tag info pages. Text paragraphs are detected and formatted as such even if originally there were just broken lines of plain text, whilst code and vertically formatted text as is often found in old-time signatures is properly represented with a monospace font.

By default, when a mailing list subscriber just hits 'reply' on any message in his mail client, the reply is only sent to the original sender, not the mailing list. Most of the time, that is a missed opportunity to enhance the usefulness of the archive. The receiver may be more considerate and re-include the mailing list in the list of recipients. This explains many of the 'holes' in many archived threads. Wherever possible, our software re-introduces a reconstruction of the missing messages from quotes in mails that were sent through the proper channel, so as to enhance readability and thread logic where before there was only confusion and bad browsing experience. Messages that were reconstructed this way bear an 'Editor's note' appended to them saying so.

While our software is rather good in interpreting the original messages correctly in order to do all this reformatting, it does sometimes need some manual human revision resulting in a few added "hints" for the software to work with. This part of the process involves carbon-based lifeforms hitting keys and thus it's slow and tedious, but we aim to catch up one day. Messages dated May 2005 and earlier have been manually revised, that's why the oldest part of the archive is so "clean".

Question 3. Why is AWare Systems hosting this archive?

Simply because we feel it's worth it. The archive is a vast resource of TIFF and LibTiff related knowledge. Many very respectable people have contributed to it, over the years.

Sam, Frank, Andrey, Even, and many others have done a fine job looking after the code all this time. They are sharing this free and open library as a community service, and we love them for it. So we were really happy to make a modest contribution of our own.

Question 4. Will you consider hosting any other archives as well?

Yes, in time, we will. There is a lot of work on the TIFF mailing list archive that is still to be done. But in time, we will consider hosting archives of other graphic file format codec library mailing lists. If you own such a mailing list and might be interested, please drop us a line, we will be more then happy to discuss this with you. Please note that we cannot take on another archive right away, though, and please also note that this offer extends to other major graphic file format codec libraries only.

Question 5. I find the LibTiff library and/or this archive useful!

Then why not cast your vote by linking to it from your own pages? We recommend the following HTML that you could simply copy and paste into your own:

<a href="http://www.simplesystems.org/libtiff/">LibTiff, a free and open source TIFF codec</a><br>
<a href="http://www.awaresystems.be/imaging/tiff/tml.html">TIFF and LibTiff mailing list archive</a><br>

Thank you for your support!