>> Then how do you explain the following in SimCoupe's fdi.h: >> #define SAD_FORMAT_ID "Aley's disk backup"
>SAD is *OLDER* than SimCoupe and [EMAIL PROTECTED], so I couldn't discuss it. >Clear? That's fair enough... >No problem. >I just said I don't want to make any new stadrards as Si does. >That's right, isn't it? That's only right, nothing more nothing less. The way I see it, Aley doesn't want to make any new file formats that people don't like. Aley's also discussing the type of compression to be used before implementing it. Aley added sad support, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with adding support for a file format which was written when nobody was around to discuss it. Si, on the other hand, has modified the dsk format without telling anyone (and I really hope he hasn't done anything else). All I have to say is: get the basics working first, then add the extra functionality *AFTER* you've released the source code. I really hoped Si wouldn't do this, but it seems that I was wrong, and that he might be attempting to make the Win32 version better than the others. Then again, Windows programmers are all alike -- they've got no respect for other platforms. DOS programmers are about as bad, too: "Go and get DOS because it's the right STANDARD!!!!" -- if we listened to that sort of advice, we'd all be living in trees. >Regardless the file formats, we could add ZIP support to SimCoupe. Please could you use zlib, with gnuzip files? You'll end up with similar (possibly slightly smaller) file sizes, that way. Btw, the *extentions* can be anything you like, such as saz/sad.gz (gzipped sad), dsz/dsk.gz (gzipped dsk), and sdz/sd.gz. clear? Try not to use zip or gz as a single extention, though. I'm wondering how good a zip/tar.gz format would be for a disk -- i.e, storing the actual files, and not a plain image of the disk. There's probably little point if you're going to gzip it anyway. It would involve replacing SamDOS/MasterDOS functions somehow, though. >Imagine you take an existing SAD/DSK/??? file and compress it into a simple >ZIP (aka PkZip). >Then rename the file back to SAD/DSK/??? and use it in SimCoupe. >I'd like to get this work. At least in DOS and Win32 version. Use zlib, and you can do it internally. At least people won't have to download gzip and install it. If you were to do it externally, I don't think deleting the original compressed file (after uncompressing it for use with simcoupe) would be a very good idea. Understand that the file "image.dsk" might already exist, and be different to the one you're inflating. Btw, I've got an idea: you could treat the floppy as a ramdisk, and load and save images to it -- that would only be optional, of course. -- Stuart Brady
