Windows 10 – QTRgui doesn't play well with TIFF files (but it is ok with TIF)

[jkschreiber]

Hopefully one of the Windows Wizards here can help me out with a peculiar problem.

Is it normal that QTRgui can’t print TIFF files with the .tiff extension, but is fine with the .tif extension?

The specific files in question are the Piezogaphy and PiezoDN Spyder Target files installed as part of the Piezography Community Edition. I noticed that all of the X-rite device specific targets use the singe-f .tif extension, while the Spyder targets have the double-ff .tiff extension.

Photoshop opens both variants and prints both as well. QTRgui opens both, but will only print the .tif files. Sending a .tiff file gets me this:


If I change .tiff to .tif it works fine.

This seems to be a QTRgui issue rather than a general Windows thing. It’s more of a nuisance than a serious problem, but I’m just wondering if others have had a similar experience or is mine unusual.

I am aware that there was a time when all Windows file extensions were limited to 3 characters, but I thought that ended long before QTR came along.

TIA,
Keith

[Brian_S]

@jkschreiber , I can replicate this behaviour. AFAICT it’s not a general Windows limitation. I suspect that I’ve stumbled across this before, but it’s too deep in the memory banks to be certain.

I’m not sure I’d call myself a Windows Wizard, but that said I think that Windows 95 removed the 8.3 file name restriction, and QTRGui dates from 2004 IIRC, so you’d think that 8.3 shouldn’t matter. But it may depend on what libraries Stephen Billard used to compile QTRGui. I recall one piece of photo software where the author had some problem along these lines. I guess it could be in the port of the QTR libraries to Windows rather than QTRGui. Whatever, it does seem to be a constraint that we’re stuck with.

[jkschreiber]

Hi Brian,

Thanks for taking the time to verify that this is indeed an issue with Windows QTRgui and the handling of tiff files. Fortunately it is a more of a minor inconvenience than anything else, and can be avoided by simply the file extension from tiff to tif.

I did get one other off-forum reply which also confirmed what you and I have found.

Maybe there are so few Piezography folks using Windows, QTRgui, and the Spyder targets (which are the only Piezography target files that have the double-f tiff extension) that this has never come up before.

And maybe one day when Walker has nothing better to do he might change the Spyder target extensions from tiff to tif (in the Windows version of the Community Edition download) so that it won’t come up again.

Cheers,
Keith