<< glad to have you on board! We currently have a working block file format
which allows read/write access and I've stuffed around 600k of data into
the blocks and it didn't break. Not much, but a start. I haven't yet really
tackled cross-platform, apart from using ANSI C++ to ensure it'll compile.
The thought was to subclass the block file to do endian-conversion
transparently. this would be rather easy, I guess, but if XDR is Open
Source, too, we should certainly consider it. Could you give more info? >>
Uli,
Could I see what you have so far as a block file format? I'm not familiar
with exactly what that means- I have a couple of definitions in my head. I
think XDR would be an excellent solution because it handles all of the
alignment issues for writing to Intel platforms. I actually added endian
functionality to the mix myself, so it will handle that as well. Just from my
limited experience with it, it provides a real solution for covering up
cross-platform issues. The only limitation is that you need to write your
format in terms of C-structs (or classes should work too). So I should
clarify- XDR is not a file format, it is a method for taking C-struct based
formats cross-platform. It was slated to be part of (now deceased)
Codewarrior Latitude, which was a project intended to port Mac apps to
Rhapsody. I'm not sure of it's entire history, but it certainly precludes
Latitude in the UNIX world. So if our format can be expressed in terms of
structs (or classes), XDR can take it cross-platform...
Regards,
Brian
