0

I have a potential customer who wants an application that can download large amounts of TIFF files locally on a machine for display.

After having discarded Java apps and Windows apps as too difficult to distribute (he has no control over the client computers) I am suggesting an offline HTML5 application.

TIFF is only natively displayed by Safari, and the FileSystem API only works on Google. WebSQL will be too small for the amount of data required (3-4 GB).

I've looked at different plug-ins (AlternaTIFF and BlackIce) but both need to be installed separately, which most of the users will probably find difficult to do.

I am wondering if there was a local TIFF Viewer that I could call from the browser that would open the TIFF from the FileSystem?

If this does not work, the last solution would be a conversion of the TIFFs to something else on the server, but it's going to make my database double in volume.

Any suggestions would be welcome!

UPDATE:

The target computers are not under the control of the client. There is no easy way to distribute the software to all the target computers. I'm assuming they are all windows machines, but it's no guarantee that .NET is installed.

That's the reason I opted for HTML5. At the moment I'm considering a Java Application launched with Java Web Application.

Customer has not yet confirmed the type of files they are using.

The customer is in the construction industry, the TIFFs are scans of large plans which (I assume) will need to be high-quality (zoomable, printable etc) so I don't think a rescaling to JPG will be accepted.

SECOND UPDATE

I'm coming to the conclusion that an HTML5 App is not going to be able to answer all the requirements. In particular there is one requirement that requires a multi-document print (select n documents and have them printed out in a batch). I'm starting to consider standalone applications that can be deployed and updated easily over a wide range of Windows configurations. I'm thinking of a Java Rich Client distribution over Java Web Start or a Microsoft application distributed via one-click-run. I'd simply write the files on the local filesystem and have the client display the images in-line. Would that be a good idea?

Andrew Magerman
  • 1,394
  • 1
  • 13
  • 23
  • What about an Imagemagick call to convert TIFF to JPG? I guess your application will be a sort of gallery, so there is no need to directly use TIFF quality (anyway monitors are still below TIFF quality, so it would be wasted). As a bonus, JPGs can be seen with every device, without the need of esoteric techniques to show them on the smartphones. No need to duplicate the database: save the JPG in a folder, using the same filename of the TIFF with a different extension. – Marco Bernardini Apr 15 '15 at 15:09
  • Do the clients have .NET framework installed? If so I would recommend harnessing powershell. You can build a WinForms "app" in a single powershell file. http://blogs.technet.com/b/stephap/archive/2012/04/23/building-forms-with-powershell-part-1-the-form.aspx Besides having .NET framework and powershell installed, the users would also need to have their execution policy set up appropriately. Ok a few pre-requisites; but I just love powershell :) – ne1410s Apr 15 '15 at 16:06
  • What kind of TIFF files? Color, bitonal, single or multi-page? The answer to these questions will determine what software you should use to view them. – BitBank Apr 15 '15 at 16:30
  • I'm not quite sure but localSorage is size limited, more Info: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2747285/html5-localstorage-size-limit-for-subdomains So html5 app will probably not be a good solution. – mrak Apr 16 '15 at 16:29
  • You can look at Java fx: As far as I know (but I'm new to this topic), you can package Java fx apps and include the runtime, so there are no pre requirements for the clients. There is even a Java fx app in the osx store to demonstrate the widgets. – mrak Apr 16 '15 at 16:34
  • @BitBank: From the lips of the customer: multi-page black and white. – Andrew Magerman Apr 17 '15 at 16:04
  • JPEG conversion and viewing of those images will be a problem due to the resultant size (gigantic) and lack of multi-page support in JPEG. – BitBank Apr 17 '15 at 17:45

1 Answers1

0

Thanks for all the comments.

I've come to the conclusion that it's a bad idea to try and view these files in browsers.

I'm going the way of a separate standalone Windows application. I'll be using the standard viewing and printing functionalities from Windows, which will avoid me all the headache of having to recreate that myself.

Andrew Magerman
  • 1,394
  • 1
  • 13
  • 23