On Sat, 24 Jan 2004, Michael Nordstrom wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 22, 2004, Alexander R. Pruss wrote:
> > Why 6? We only need two bytes of data for the exact location.
>
> The function code Chris suggested has the benefit that we can drop
> the old named anchor function code in the future and only use the
> new one (but still *support* the old format in the viewer).
>
> A function code that modifies the next function code and must be
> used in a specific order is great for making it possible for old
> viewers to read new content, but not so good for the Plucker format.
Agred.
> It would also require a strange function code, since it would be
> necessary to use 3 bytes of data when only 2 bytes are required. We
> don't have enough function codes to "waste" them on a function that
> modifies another function and since this is an anchor related function
> it should use 00001 for the function, but the normal anchor uses 2
> bytes of data, i.e. 00001010 (0x0A) is already taken which leaves us
> with the 3 bytes data option.
Why not just have a new anchor function that takes two bytes of data,
namely the byte offset from the beginning of the record, as in my original
proposal, but augment the proposal with a rule of how one handles overlap
of anchors, namely that whenever one has:
Do*Anchor ... Do*Anchor ... DoAnchorEnd
the middle Do*Anchor is ignored completely. This way we can generate
documents that are backwards and forwards compatible by generating:
DoExactAnchor DoNamedAnchor ... DoAnchorEnd
The parser can then have the options:
--anchors=exact
--anchors=paragraph
--anchors=both
In --anchors=both mode, we generate both DoExactAnchor and
DoNamedAnchor. This is 8 bytes. In --ancors=exact mode, though, we only
generate 4 bytes.
But maybe there is some important reason to have the byte offset be
paragraph relative. It would be more "in the spirit" of the paragraph
structure of Plucker docs.
Alex
--
Dr. Alexander R. Pruss || e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Philosophy Department || online papers and home page:
Georgetown University || www.georgetown.edu/faculty/ap85
Washington, DC 20057 ||
U.S.A. ||
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- Paul of Worczyn (1424)
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