Terminology interchange format

Citation

Andrew, A.M. (2000), "Terminology interchange format", Kybernetes, Vol. 29 No. 9/10. https://doi.org/10.1108/k.2000.06729iag.006

Terminology interchange format

Terminology interchange format

The large attachment mentioned was in fact a copy of a paper from a journal, transmitted in Terminology Interchange Format (TIF). As described by Hall and Hudson (1997), this format allows for more than 100 data types, but when used to transmit copies of existing paper publications it amounts to the transmission of a scanned image and can produce very large files.

A service for the supply of papers from journals is provided by a company in Los Angeles called Infotrieve Systems, accessible at: http://www3.infotrieve. com/ Papers can be sent by first class post, or by fax or by e-mail in TIF format. The company is recommended by the publishers of at least one important journal as being the best way to obtain reprints from its back numbers, if there is no easy access to a library holding them. (The charge, however, can vary enormously, depending on the copyright demands of the publishers of respective journals, and Infotrieve Systems gives its clients the chance to check this before finalising their orders.)

Although Infotrieve Systems is ready to transmit copies of papers in TIF format, more cheaply than by post or FAX, it warns that users may have difficulty in dealing with such transmissions unless they have special software. There seems to be no special difficulty, however, at least for items consisting of text and black-white illustrations. There is a facility within Windows 98, called "Imaging Preview", that allows TIF documents to be displayed on the screen and to be printed.

With my home set-up of a PC connected to an Apple LaserWriter, with PostScript as the language of communication between the two, printing of bit-mapped graphics is notoriously slow. For a paper in TIF format, the printing of a single page only commenced after the printer had "sat and thought" for 35 minutes. However, for the paper that was received remotely with the help of mailcom, the computer used then had "Paint Shop Pro" software which took priority over the "Imaging Preview" in opening the TIF document and allowed the passing of individual pages to an ink-jet printer intended for PC use, which commenced printing virtually immediately.

An interesting difference between the two software facilities was that the "Imaging Preview" accepted a multi-page document as one item, with means of advancing through the pages and selecting pages by number, and if desired printing specified ranges of numbered pages, whereas "Paint Shop" was more graphically-orientated and treated each page as a separate image. A big advantage of the latter was that page images could be cropped and the selected portion enlarged to fill the page. This allows a great saving of ink (or toner) where pages from journals are smaller than the A4 page and the extra space as transmitted is solidly black.