I've been doing some thinking about the filetype question. A magic number was mentioned and I mentioned having a 32 byte tag field. (this could be improper use of the word tag field).
Firstly a magic number is rubbish. Any operating system will have to know beforehand what all the magic numbers signify. This is an impossible task. The OS would start out with the basic say 24 SAM file types as magic numbers and wouldn't recognise any new ones which were created until a new version of the OS is spread to EVERYONE. So ban the magic numbers. The MSDOS extension system is rather good I think, just that the names are a bit short. So have a dos with say 24 characters for the name and 8 for the extension. The extension would have to really be an extension and not a half-solution like it is with masterdos having anything after a dot as an extension. Variable places for extensions are no fun to work with. Since the SAM is basically a BASIC orientated machine the dos would have to incorporate something to recognize a few standard extensions and handle these nicely for BASIC - such as the BASIC file and the arrays. In my view therefore the extension system is the ideal way of sorting out different "filetypes". What have you lot got to say about that? Stefan Drissen aka Solar Flare of Entropy E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Stefan Drissen) S-mail: Zevende Herven 6, 5232 JZ 's-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands
