2009-11-09 00:44:39 UTC
If you don't get the 16bit stuff, then don't worry, you don't need these functions! These are images used in professional photography or scientific imaging.
You don't need to "write the slices to disk the first time they're requested" as the file formats we use are already tiled. IIPImage also does server side caching in memory, so can potentially be faster than pre-sliced tiling if you have a lot of RAM.
We have several clients that have different strengths and weaknesses. Our Ajax IIPMooViewer client doesn't currently have the smooth zooming, but is, in my experience, by far the fastest and most light-weight client out there. It is also runs in all browsers and is able to run well on older slower hardware. If you look at our multispectral demo or the demos at the National Gallery, it's also very extensible. I will eventually add smooth panning when I have time. If you want smooth panning now, we also have a flash client that can do this already.
The Seadragon people have done a great job on their javascript client. It uses, I believe, the canvas extension, so interestingly won't work in internet explorer. I presume they switch to silverlight for these browsers. Don't forget also that the licensing of it last time I looked was still uncertain.
You mentioned OpenZoom. It's very nice indeed. Well, OpenZoom is in fact compatible with IIPImage. There is a demo here of OpenZoom using the latest version of the IIPImage server and a single TIFF file. The next version of our flex client will probably use the openzoom SDK in some way.
