On 5 January 2016 at 08:14, Peter Relson <[email protected]> wrote: > We have never, to my knowledge, encountered any downside to using GOFF. Is > there any?
Well, a small one. When browsing a traditional object "deck", for example as part of SMP/E input, it's very easy to see that things are roughly right because each line (card image) begins with what looks like a dot (the X'02'), followed by three well-known characters, usually just .ESD, .RLD, .TXT, and .END. With GOFF it's just a BLOB split at card boundaries. Particularly when using both classic datasets and UNIX files to build a PTF, it's a handy sanity check that conversions haven't been blatantly mishandled. Yeah, I know, one shouldn't be editing object decks in the first place, it's 2016, etc. etc. Tony H.
