| From: | Matthew Kille |
| Date: | 3 Sep 2000 at 16:01:16 |
| Subject: | Re: AMIOPEN: Compressed archive formats |
Hi Matthew,
On 03-Sep-00, Matthew J Fletcher wrote:
>>> Is Amiga going to decide on a 'preferred' archive format?
> Whilst that makes it look nicer it defeats any chance of new technology
> being used,
> for example aminet still needs lha files that unix lha can read (so not
> the newset
> amiga ones). There are a many file formats with better compression, all
> of which should
> be used but they cant, because rules made years ago need to be stuck to.
Better compression is not an issue. Who cares if you save a few bytes, if
you're losing consistancy for the user. LHA still works just fine today.
And how much better compression do you expect in the future? We must be
pretty close to the limit now...
It's the interface that matters.
There are many ways things could be handled in the future. (Auto updating
archivers, etc.) But for the near future, during development and the early
days of the AmigaOne, a standard preferred archive format should be
determined.
>> What we need are some standard formats for all systems and keep it the
>> same.
> What ever one you chose it will be out of date, what you need is an
> improved datatypes
> interface so you can use any filetype you want and it will be translated
> by the system
> so all applications can r/w them.
The risk you run is that you keep having to add new support for every
little change that happens, users start getting out of date, and before
you know it, you've got the bloated Windoze.
There are no easy answers. :/
>> From a programmers view that also makes life dramaticly easyer.
> Micro$oft defined there 'standard' BMP format for bitmaps, over a decade
> ago and everybody
> still has to put up with rubbish compression beacuse of it.
We're not talking about a lazy implemention being forced on people. We're
talking about a well thought out interface. (Based on years of practical
experience.)
> In the fastest moveing industry ever created, if you set anything in
> stone its only
> a matter of time before you are punnished for it, i refer to choices made
> about any
> definitions, object formats, sound, movie, graphics, 3d objects, etc ..
I agree. But there should always be mechanisms in place so that nobody ever
gets left behind. People don't want to be constantly checking that they
have the latest versions of any particular decoder. And I don't mean those
annoying requesters that pop up and tell you that you're out of date, and
that you should upgrade everything!
But again, this is a different issue.
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