wmaker TIFF (actually libtiff4) problem

[Harold L Hunt II]

Thanks Chuck.  That closes the problem from my standpoint.

Harold

Charles Wilson wrote:
> Takuma Murakami wrote:
> 
>> I have tried to fix the wmaker problem but get stuck
>> since I don't know how to debug DLLs...
> 
> 
>>
>> Although I don't know much about TIFF files, I ran
>> tiffinfo on two systems.  The target TIFF file is
>> /usr/X11R6/share/WINGs/Images.tiff in cygwin
>> WindowMaker distribution.
>>
>> On the problematic cygwin (WindowMaker-0.80.2-1,
>> tiff-3.6.0-5) the output is:
>> TIFFReadDirectory: Warning, /usr/X11R6/share/WINGs/Images.tiff: 
>> unknown field wi
>> th tag 317 (0x13d) encountered.
> 
> ...
> 
>>   Compression Scheme: LZW
> 
> ...
> 
>>   Predictor: horizontal differencing 2 (0x2)
> 
> 
> 
>> The 'Compression Scheme' field indicates LZW.
>> Is this relevant to the problem?
> 
> 
> 
> Yes.  LZW support is not included in and has never been included in any 
> cygwin distribution of libtiff.  This is because LZW is patented by 
> Unisys and they do not allow the algorithms to be used without royalty 
> payments.
> 
> Now, the patent did expire in September 2003 in the US, but the patent 
> is still valid in several other countries.  Therefore, we STILL do not 
> include LZW support in the binary distributions of libtiff.
> 
> (Of course, this makes me wonder: (a) there were reports that "this used 
> to work -- or still works -- with cygtiff3.  But THAT dll did not 
> provide LZW support either.  See below for random speculation. (b) Why 
> is WindowMaker distributing TIFFs that cannot be read by free (as in 
> speech) software without violating patents in some countries?  Do they 
> only care about the US?  This is an issue that should be raised on the 
> relevant WindowMaker lists)
> 
> IF you want to test this proposition, the tiff -src package distributed 
> by cygwin provides the source code and instructions for rebuilding 
> cygtiff4 wiht LZW for your own personal use, if you happen to live in a 
> country where the UniSys patent has lapsed -- like the US -- or if you 
> have purchased a license from UniSys.
> 
> Then you could see if rebuilding cygtiff4 WITH LZW fixes the problem. 
> (Random speculation: perhaps the person who reported success by copying 
> their cygtiff3 onto cygtiff4 did exactly that -- rebuilt cygtiff3 with 
> LZW, but so long ago that they forgot.  That would explain all of the 
> reported behaviors...)
> 
> -- 
> Chuck
>