On Tue, 7 Sep 1999, Aley Keprt wrote: > > Andrew Collier wrote: > > > > >> Internally packed SAD is still a SAD. > > It's a compressed sad -- the user *needs* to know this. > > Again: Compressed SAD is still a SAD.
Again: Oh no it isn't. the user *needs* to be able to see, at a glance, the difference between an uncompressed and a compressed image. There are programs, current programs such as samdsk and dskman, which the user *will need to use* in addition to SimCoupe - they understand .dsk files but do not understand compressed .dsk files. The user MUST be aware that a file is compressed before trying to feed it to one of these programs. > Microsoft made many versions of their Word and DOC files. > If Microsoft named each particular version with a new name, > now we would have tens of file extensions. > But there is only one extension: DOC. Yes, and that's a Right Royal Pain if you're trying to read a file and you don't have access to the very super-duper latest Microsoft software. It's impossible even to determine which version of Word you should be trying to interpret (eg. ClarisWorks can read a Word 6 document but not any later version; if I'm given a .doc file I don't know if I can read it until I try -- if it's a Word97 document then that's wasting MY time.) Just because Microsoft have implemented a broken standard, doesn't mean we all have to. ... > If somebody will want to pack old SAD's to new shorter files, > he probably will use a program to do it (:-)). That program can > easily distinguish between packed and unpacked SAD, so > there will be no "Bad Thing [tm]" as Stuart Brady wrote. If you use zlib (as I thought had been agreed, was a Good Idea TM) then there is NO difference between a compressed SAD saved by the new SimCoupe, and a normal SAD saved by the current SimCoupe which is zip-compressed or whatever. .. except that you'd give them different filenames. > In addition, you can never use new fileformats in old programs. > (Again you can't load the lastest DOC files to the older Word.) Are you saying this is a good thing? > So you even won't be able to load packed SAD's to older > SimCoupe. But you will! Since you know that a compressed SAD is just a normal SAD which has been compressed (natch) there's really nothing to stop you from uncompressing the SAD and using it. > That's reality. Don't believe it. Given that some Microsoft programmers made a design error, so what? Either make the same error they did, or do things right this time around. Andrew -- -- Andrew Collier ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) -- My other -- http://mnemotech.ucam.org -- .sig is a -- Part 3 Materials Science, Cambridge -- PDF file --
