What I had in mind when Andy came up with the idea was a central community for all libraries that read and\or write file formats. Kind of like http://wotsit.org on crack. So if someone had a requirement to read/write some format they could just go to formats.apache.org and see if a library was available. If they couldn't find it we would have a whole community available to help them write their own.
At work, one of my niches is file formats. I am a programmer on a document management/workflow system. We always get new file formats that need their text indexed for searching. Right now I have to go scour the web, sourceforge, groups, and try to find a) libraries or b) specs to program myself. Well it has happened at least once where I have written my own when there was something else out there already just because I didn't stumble across it (i.e. Excel). From my experience there are hardly any open source java APIs for reading file formats other than the big three: Word, Excel, PDF. For example, right now at work, I am writing java code to read text from a DWG file (AutoCAD) based on the spec at http://www.opendwg.org. I have a vision of a community of programmers frolicking through fields of Hex dumps and hard to understand format specs :-) I think one day it could be as important to the OS community as the Apache webserver. It would not only create a much needed community for fellow file format hackers to rally to, but also a one stop shop for file format APIs. btw, what is CDF? Ryan --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
