[fpc-pascal] FPImage and mult-page TIFF support

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Fri, 9 Dec 2016, Marco van de Voort wrote:

> In our previous episode, Michael Van Canneyt said:
>>>> Why FPImage uses 64bit per pixel is beyond me! The original author of
>>>> FPImage clearly thought he/she saw something cool in that, but 99.99999%
>>>> of the time *nobody* needs that. It's causing more grief (and code to do
>>>> conversions) than anything else.
>>>
>>> The 64bit is the maximum limit. I doubt the 99.99999%. Image editing
>>> require more than 8bit per channel since decades.
>>
>> And that is why we decided to use 64-bit.
>
> I never got the one size to rule them all mentality.
>
> I understand that code for more complex code like advanced filters won't be
> written for various bitsizes and subformats.  But run of the mills
> usage IMHO should be in the format closer to both disk and display.

This is also a valid design choice. One we didn't make at the time.
You can discuss for ages about it.

It was decided at the time to use 64-bit for the API. 
To reduce memory usage, other storage formats have been introduced by e.g.
Mattias. But the API remains 64 bit.

Michael.