Mr TIFF

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Emotional impact and recognition of “Mr TIFF”

  • Many commenters were unexpectedly moved by a story about a file format, describing it as beautiful, touching, and even tear‑inducing.
  • There’s strong appreciation for finally giving proper credit to an unsung engineer whose name most professionals had never heard despite widespread use of TIFF.
  • Several connect this to a broader theme: tech culture often erases or ignores its own history and quiet contributors; efforts like this feel like “digital wakes” and cultural repair work.

Historical research, Wikipedia, and sources

  • Commenters praise the detective work and note how easily such history could have been lost if one person hadn’t cared enough to dig.
  • A side thread discovers that the inventor had in fact commented on the TIFF Wikipedia talk page years ago, confirming the “42” joke and adding details about naming.
  • This leads to debate over Wikipedia policies:
    • Primary vs secondary sources, “verifiability not truth,” and “no original research.”
    • Whether a user’s self‑identification on Wikipedia or HN could qualify as a citable source.
  • Some argue the hidden talk‑page evidence was “obvious in hindsight”; others emphasize how nontrivial it is to find such material without already knowing what to look for.

TIFF format, design, and technical legacy

  • Multiple practitioners reminisce about extensive TIFF use in publishing, mapping, geodesy, microscopy, geospatial imaging (GeoTIFF/COG), clinical trial scanning, and camera RAW/DNG.
  • The tagging and extensibility model is praised for accommodating projections, metadata, and varied use cases.
  • Others criticize that same extensibility for causing “Thousands of Incompatible File Formats,” with inconsistent vendor extensions and quirks.
  • Several note TIFF is still very much alive in niche and professional domains, even if less visible to end users.

“42”, hidden text, and trivia

  • People highlight the magic number 42 in the spec, confirmed by the inventor as a Hitchhiker’s Guide reference.
  • Discussion branches into whether 42 is “special,” ASCII asterisk jokes, and other numerological or humorous takes.
  • Commenters also examine two TIFF 6.0 PDFs, one containing the inventor’s name in white‑on‑white “invisible” text; theories range from Easter egg to lazy redaction.

Digital preservation and loss

  • The thread broadens into concern that early magazines, Usenet, and plain text preserved this story, whereas modern web platforms (social networks, proprietary sites) are already losing huge amounts of content.
  • People list vanished services and now‑broken links, and share personal strategies of archiving material locally and via the Wayback Machine.

Meta: the book and ongoing oral histories

  • Some struggled to find the linked book, prompting feedback about site UX; the author explains a desire not to push the book too hard given the story’s tone.
  • The author mentions having interviewed around 100 people, especially lesser‑known Apple‑era engineers, to capture similar stories before they’re lost.