.tiff files from the Veteran's Admin. and our solution

[Robert Sullivan]

>I came across our first .tiff file problem this afternoon with a patron 
>using a Gates Foundation computer (Windows NT). I d/l'ed the file and took 
>it to my office and opened it without problem in IrfanView, a freeware 
>graphics viewer, which I had d/l'ed previously.

Could you tell us the location at va.gov where it showed TIFF images?  I'd like
to test my setup against them.

In the ensuing months since the original discussion, I have had a chance to
see how the Gates PCs handled TIFFs.  On "our" PCs, I succeeded in tweaking
QuickTime so that I was able to view patent images and the government documents
scanned by our state library.

On the Gates PCs, I installed AlternaTIFF (our viewer of choice) but left
QuickTime off, as I didn't want to modify the Gates configuration more than
necessary.  For reasons which elude me, we can view patents but not New York
state documents on our Gates PCs.

This is probably caused by a fairly obscure setting, but the two sites also
point out something else: all TIFFs are not created equal.

When you view a Patent Office image, skipping between pages requires you to use
the links in the left menu.  AlternatTIFF's page number box is disabled. Images
posted by the New York State Library, on the other hand, have this feature
available.  I suppose this means the USPTO creates one image per page, while
NYSL uses a multipage format.

It would be interesting to see how IrfanView handles these.  My test URL is
<http://nysdocs.nysed.gov/scandocs1.asp?oclc=15369732>, because that's the one
my patron wanted to view.

Bob Sullivan                               scp_sulli at sals.edu
Schenectady County Public Library (NY)     http://www.scpl.org