Euan Ritchie's playground

Navigation

Search this site

Login More quotes… 
Expand all rantsList rants ordered backwards in timeList rants alphabetically

Standards

Companies that abuse openly available standards (even if proprietary) really get on my wick. For instance...

I bought a Minolta Dynax 7D for Christmas and discovered a very annoying detail after first using it. I put many of the photos I take on my webserver and to make my life easier I wrote code to automatically thumbnail and orientate photos when requested.

But Minolta didn't deign to use the correct Exif standard for indicating orientation and secreted the information away. It turns out that it's hidden in the 376th Byte of the "Maker Note" property (ID 927C) as the ascii for "H", "R" or "L", meaning Horizontal, Right or Left rotation.

Bleeding obvious really in't it? And in no way related to any kind of standard - while being embedded in Exif properties alongside a completely useless and inaccurrate actual Orientation property.

If I hadn't been able to locate this obscure detail I'd have been right brassed off and looking for my money back. If New Zealand consumer law says something must fulfill the purpose for which it's purchased do you think I could argue my expectation of standards support?