Hylafaxplus is not compatible with libtiff 4.6.

[Bad-Mad]

Hylafaxplus is not compatible with libtiff 4.6.

I had to install the last 4.5 version. (libtiff-4.5.1-2)

See https://libtiff.gitlab.io/libtiff/releases/v4.6.0.html

Changes in TIFF v4.6.0:

Tools changes Removed functionality:

The following tools are no longer compiled and have been moved to archive/tools:

fax2ps, fax2tiff, pal2rgb, ppm2tiff, raw2tiff, rgb2ycbcr, thumbnail, tiff2bw tiff2rgba, tiffcmp, tiffcrop, tiffdither, tiffgt, tiffmedian

The following tools are no longer compiled by default: tiff2ps and tiff2pdf. They have been moved to tools/unsupported. They can be built by setting --enable-tools-unsupported for autoconf, or -Dtiff-tools-unsupported for CMake, but as the name imply, they are no longer supported by upstream. Packagers are suggested not to enable those options.

tiffcp: remove -i option (ignore errors), because almost all fuzzer issues were consequential errors from ignored errors because of the "-i" option.

[Lee Howard]

Hello Mathias,

Thank you for alerting us to this unfortunate decision with libtiff development.

Sadly, it's understandable. Although fax may have been a core purpose for libtiff development and usage 20 years ago, it no longer is. libtiff development today is largely driven by extremely large photographic imagery and similar uses. These uses have no need for many of the traditional tools found within libtiff. Consequently, these tools become unsupported/unmaintained and eventually are rendered forever broken by changes in the underlying library.

Over the past few years HylaFAX has had to deal with libtiff development changing core structures within the library. So, it's not surprising at all that libtiff's own tools have had to deal with the same. I suspect that there are no developers among the libtiff development team that care to maintain these legacy tools against the rapidly changing underlying library.

Among the archived tools, HylaFAX+ currently only uses fax2ps in the rare situation that faxrcvd or notify is used to deliver postscript copies of the faxes via email. tiff2bw and tiffdither are used for Floyd-Steinberg dithering if the administrator has enabled "DITHERING=libtiff-fs" (in etc/FaxModify). Among the unsupported tools, HylaFAX+ uses both tiff2pdf and tiff2ps extensively in delivery of fax documents as well as pre-processing documents for use with Ghostscript.

Assuming they have not already published their advice somewhere that I can find, I will initiate a conversation with the libtiff development team about what they expect users of these tools to do. However, HylaFAX+ is likely faced with the options to either oblige users to install old versions of libtiff - or to continue to internalize legacy libtiff code. The decision between those two options is obviously to internalize the legacy libtiff code. So, chances are that HylaFAX+ will just need to internalize, build, and install its own copies of fax2ps, tiff2bw, tiffdither, tiff2ps, and tiff2pdf... so, essentially HylaFAX+ would become the source for maintained versions of these tools.

Thanks,

Lee.