Scanning Formats (TIFF vs. JPEG)

[Doug Jackson]

 > "I see where you're coming from - but I also know that writing a TIFF 
 > decoder is pretty straightforward; I wouldn't fancy doing the same 
for > either JPEG or PDF (not sure about PNG, but I get the impression 
that > it's pretty simple in nature)."


Noooooo!!!!!

Don't do it.  The problem with writing your own decoder is that you may 
not have your own set of reference images, so testing it would be 
'interesting'.  This is the major cause of security issues in software 
at the moment.  All it takes is one case where you mis-handle input, and 
you have introduced a vulnerability into your application. 
Unfortunately, you can't work on the basis that image data is not 
hostile any more.

That's what application libraries are for.  Yes, they are larger that 
rolling your own, but they are also more robust.