<div dir="ltr">This should be relatively easy, given that the .TAB file header contains a Table Type which is commonly NATIVE (old .TAB files readable by MITAB, etc.) or NATIVEX (extended .TAB files), as well as a few other less popular options. So the 'magic' identifier should be clearly spelled out in plain text.<div><br></div><div>E.g.</div><div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">!table<br>!version 1520<br>!charset WindowsLatin1<br>Definition Table<br>  Type NATIVEX Charset "WindowsLatin1" Locale "en-US"<br>  Fields 32 ...</blockquote><div> </div><div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><font size="1"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><b>____________________________________________________<br>Ryan Proulx</b> | Team Lead, Principal Developer, Project Manager</span></font><br><div><p style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:x-small;white-space:pre-wrap;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Arial">Suite 1200 - 9639 137A Street, Surrey, BC Canada V3T 0M1</span><br></p></div><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="background-color:transparent;font-size:10.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:baseline"><a href="mailto:ryan.proulx@safe.com" target="_blank">ryan.proulx@safe.com</a>  | </span><a href="http://www.safe.com/" target="_blank"><span style="font-size:10.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;vertical-align:baseline"> </span><span style="font-size:10.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(17,85,204);background-color:transparent;vertical-align:baseline">www.safe.com</span></a><br></p><span><span><font size="1"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><b>____________________________________________________</b></span></font></span><br><a href="http://www.safe.com/emailsignature" target="_blank"><img alt="http://www.safe.com/emailsignature" src="http://cdn.safe.com/emailsignature.jpg"></a><br><br><br><br></span></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Aug 3, 2020 at 3:06 AM Even Rouault <<a href="mailto:even.rouault@spatialys.com">even.rouault@spatialys.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><u></u>
<div style="font-family:monospace;font-size:9pt;font-weight:400;font-style:normal">
<p style="margin:0px;text-indent:0px">On lundi 3 août 2020 09:26:16 CEST Rahkonen Jukka (MML) wrote:</p>
<p style="margin:0px;text-indent:0px">> Hi,</p>
<p style="margin:0px;text-indent:0px">> </p>
<p style="margin:0px;text-indent:0px">> Might be good if the MITAB driver could recognize if TAB file is of the new</p>
<p style="margin:0px;text-indent:0px">> Extented TAB format and show a meaningful error for the users. It could</p>
<p style="margin:0px;text-indent:0px">> save troubles similar to  this one in gis.stackexchange</p>
<p style="margin:0px;text-indent:0px">> <a href="https://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/369014/mapinfo-tab-files-with-large" target="_blank">https://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/369014/mapinfo-tab-files-with-large</a></p>
<p style="margin:0px;text-indent:0px">> int-cant-be-converted-to-qgis-or-any-other-format. I hope the new format has</p>
<p style="margin:0px;text-indent:0px">> some magic number that stores the version.</p>
<p style="margin:0px;text-indent:0px"> </p>
<p style="margin:0px;text-indent:0px">From a comment in the thread, it looks it might be something that could be addressed by MITAB with some extra work. We'd need a reproducer dataset to confirm.</p>
<p style="margin:0px;text-indent:0px"> </p>
<p style="margin:0px;text-indent:0px">Even</p>
<p style="margin:0px;text-indent:0px"> </p>
<p style="margin:0px;text-indent:0px">-- </p>
<p style="margin:0px;text-indent:0px">Spatialys - Geospatial professional services</p>
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