Friday, December 25, 2009

Making okular the default program for tiff files?

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=219326 is a request to make Okular the default viewer for TIFF files based in that it seems that now the default TIFF viewer in KDE is kolourpaint and it doesn't support multipage tiff files.

Comments? Should we change it?

19 comments:

Unknown said...

I think Okular should definitely be the default application for TIFF files.

Unknown said...

mmm... why not gwenview, the default image viewer?

rj said...

If I were looking for a program to open a fax document I would not think of opening a paint program. I would look for something like Okular

Albert Astals Cid said...

@Ezio: because gwenview doesn't open multipage TIFF files either, easy ;-)

Jonas said...

Two points.

1. I, as Ryan, would think of a generic document viewer rather than a paint program if I just want to view something. Which, in my case at least, is the only thing I need to do with tiff-files - multipage or not.

2. The point is more of a question: which of the two programs is most frequently updated and fixed? Just a quick browse through the websvn interface, kolourpaint seems to be suffering from quite a bit of bitrot which okular doesn't suffer from. So at a guess it seems unlikely (unless someone steps up to the plate) that Kolourpaint would gain the multipage-tiff capability anytime soon. For that reason I'd vote for changing the default to Okular.

Unknown said...

Definitely change. I was very suprised when I got a tiff-scan and opened it - I never really run Kolourpaint before. Ask yourself when did you edit a tiff file last time...

Enrico Ros said...

I'd say Go! for Okular (but I'm a little biased in favor of Okular ;-)

Anonymous said...

Personally I'd say fix up gwenview to handle multipage tiff's, but this is obviously harder work and I'd say okular is a better option then kolourpaint in the meantime. Although this does raise an interesting question of context... because a tiff containing an image seems more at home in gwenview, whereas a tiff containing a fax document feels more at home in okular. I don't know the solution to this problem (if one exists) but it smells of nepomuk to me... opening files with a program related to their semantic information as well as just their file type.

Anonymous said...

I also vote for Okular. Okular is the universal document viewer.

But adding support to open TIFFs in Gwenview is also a good option. Is this not possible through libtiff?

Anonymous said...

Put it either in Okular or Gwenview (depending on if it is more an image or ...).

Important point is that both are available via KPart so they could be easily included anywhere else :)

Fri13 said...

1. Remove the Kolourpaint from the kdegraphics package. I do not use it and it is set default application on some distributions even for GIMP's XFC file. It is not something what you expect when you open a just edited GIMP file. Kolourpaint opens by default TIFF files as well, were they single- or multipaged. Not good thing. Kolourpaint is something what should be offered only for kids and be a optional and not tied to kdeEdu package either if default MIME type does not get changed.

2. Ask someone to fix the Gwenview's problem so it can open multipaged TIFF as well. But question from me is that is there a images stored as multipaged TIFF or is it used only for Faxes or similar documents?

3. Use Okular for now and pass the Kolourpaint totally. Depending about the question what I asked on 2.

4. Someone suggested Nepomuk, I would agree as well about it. Find out is the TIFF a document or a picture and open it with the application what fits for that task. And I can not still wait we get the KDE technologies forget the MIME type and follow the information what file says first and then the mime, even that mime would exist in first place. We could use nepomuk to offer all kind other information for that function as well.

My opinion is that just "kill" the Kolourpaint, even that you can use it as well like the MS Paint to do pretty amazing graphics.

Drawing a Mona Lisa
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uk2sPl_Z7ZU

Drawing a car
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUWqRhReaZk

Unknown said...

There are two MUSTs:

1. Kolourpaint definitely should net be the default option to open TIF files;

2. Kolourpaint should stay in kdegraphics(or whatever appropriate part of default KDE, I don't care), but it shouldn't be a default options to "Open" any documents. Though, it can be an option to "Edit" for some image formats.

,and one WANT:

- Fix Gwenview to support multi-page TIFFs. Let Okular stay the default option for "Printed/paged documents", and use Gwenview for bitmap graphics (which is TIFF in the first place).

Anonymous said...

Okular really should be the default TIF-viewer. TIF is used widely for fax-like multipage documents, so a multipage document reader is the only viewer, which makes sense.

Derek Kite said...

Either my setup already had okular set as default, or I set it up that way.

I remember at one time tiff being a drawing format. There was a dos software package that saved in that format by default. This is in the '80s, and can't remember the details, but I remember working with tiff files for that purpose. I don't think any modern graphics applications do that anymore, and most tiff files that you would see nowadays are faxes or in my usage, email attachments.

Maybe the solution for gwenview or others that are stuck with single page tiffs is to get Qt tiff support upgraded.

Derek

Anonymous said...

KolourPaint as a default for any image format is a big mistake--the default action should be 'view', not 'edit' (unless the format is a project file specifically for editing).

Definitely use Okular.

Anonymous said...

Speaking as Gwenview maintainer, properly integrating multi-page support is non trivial. I'd rather see Okular being associated to .tiff by default.

I believe (but I have no numbers to back me up) there are more people using tiff for fax than to store classic raster images, and it's always better to optimize for the most common usage. The few users willing to use Gwenview instead can change the association.

Klaas said...

Tiff is one of the formats used for long term image archiving, but I agree that nowadays its mostly used with fax.

BTW - Kooka was supporting multi paged tiff images, code is still available in the KDE SVN

CryoGenFX said...

so, i'll go against the stream here it seems, but i just can't figure out what y'all are talking about. faxes? i've never seen a fax in tif format before, those scary few times i must handle faxes at work i use a fax machine ^^

otherwise, it's always been images to me, worked in dtp a little while some years ago, when tiff was the image format of choice with the printers an preprocessors, but i'm guessing that's because RAW wasn't invented/widely spread back then?

anyways, all tiff files i've seen to date during my many years of computer usage have been rasterized images. indeed, if you look up tif or tiff on wikipedia, it will tell you it's a tagged image file format...image being the operative word here, seems like it should go in the same lot as jpg, gif bmp and so on. open in gwenview.

could perhaps be an option, that if gwenview detects multipage fax or whatever, it could offer to open in okular, as it can't handle those themselves?

Troy Unrau said...

I use tiff images on a daily basis, as almost all NASA planetary data is delivered in tiff format at the higher resolutions. Additionally, there's GeoTIFF, which has additional geographic metadata designed for viewing map projected images. That said, none of these images are ever multipage images, so gwenview makes me happy.

Is it possible to detect if the tiff is multipage or a fax and then use okular? I've never encountered a tiff fax file, so I don't know. Either way, kolourpaint isn't really the right tool for the job in my experiences.