Does OpenSlide support BigTIFF Aperio files? Also, compiling from source?

[Adam Goode]

On Fri, Sep 9, 2011 at 18:54, Zak Fallows <openslide at m.allo.ws> wrote:
> Dear OpenSlide Users,
>
> I have a few questions:
>
> 1. Does OpenSlide support BigTIFF Aperio .SVS files, with 64-bit
> offsets? The OpenSlide homepage says that version 3.2.2 (June 2010)
> added "untested BigTIFF support", but is that just for generic (flat)
> tiled TIFFs, or does that extend to TIFF-based pyramidal formats like
> Aperio?
>

It should work, but please try it out! You will indeed need to build
against a >=4.0 version of bigtiff.

> 2. In order to open a BigTIFF Aperio file with OpenSlide, do I need to
> install the an extra BigTIFF library, beyond the normal dependencies of
> OpenSlide? Do I need to install LibTIFF 4 Beta, instead of the latest
> stable release of LibTIFF 3? I have OpenSlide 3.2.4 up and running under
> Ubuntu 10.10 and Windows 7, but I am pretty sure I never installed a
> BigTIFF library on either. I installed on Windows 7 by just downloading
> "openslide-win32.zip" and putting the DLLs on my PATH, and I don't think
> the included "libtiff-3.dll" supports BigTIFF.
>

On Ubuntu, I think you'd need to build your own libtiff (but don't
install it, you don't want to replace the system library which is I
believe libtiff 3.9 something). Then build your openslide against your
4.0 libtiff.

I don't think I included a tiff 4.0 DLL with those windows binaries.
That is what you would need.

> 3. If I need a different version of LibTIFF for BigTIFFs, will I have to
> compile it from source on Windows 7? What is the easiest way to upgrade
> OpenSlide on Windows to read BigTIFFs?

Hmm, I am not sure about this.

>
> 4. I might like to try compiling OpenSlide and all the dependencies from
> source under Windows 7, how difficult will that be? I realize this
> question is much more open ended than the prior three. I have some
> experience compiling C libraries from source on Ubuntu, but no
> experience doing so on Windows.

The way I built win32 openslide was by cross compiling from mingw32 on
Fedora. I think there is a mingw for ubuntu, in which case that might
work. There are a fair number of libraries required though, and they
are all included in standard Fedora.

>
> Thank you,
>
> Zak Fallows


Have fun with OpenSlide!

Adam