| From: | Asaf |
| Date: | 4 Sep 2000 at 13:00:21 |
| Subject: | Re: AMIOPEN: Compressed archive formats |
Matthew J Fletcher wrote:
> Hi,.
>
> > > Is Amiga going to decide on a 'preferred' archive format?
> > >
> > > Looking through the contributions to ftp.amiga.com lists, there are so many
> > > different formats in use, zip, tgz, lha, bzip2, etc., that it can be a bit
> > > of a pain remembering which command/arguments need to be used to extract
> > > the files you want.
>
> 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.
>
> > I agree. The same goes for file formats.
> > The Amiga OE is multiformat, so even "document.readme" will cause problems on
> > other platforms.
>
> So what, ?, if a user is to dumb to open a file from a text viewer (or make a
> filetype
> association) rarther then relying on just clicking on it then they will never
> be able
> to cope with any new format and will be stuck in the past.
>
I understand what you are saying. So you want to get away from file association ?
>
> > 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 What ever one you chose it will be out of date, what you need is an improved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.
Having data types for each compression method is different. What I am saying is we
do not want files, for example text files that have multiple file extensions.
E.G.
Readme.txt, install.Readme etc.
I would like to have consistency, not just within Ami.
Furthermore I would like to have some sort of information object attached to it,
directly or a link to a database on my HD.
For example, filename : Music.wav.
Object : Music.wav
Author : Asaf
Type : Amateur attempt at Fur Elise
Search : Music, sound, audio, home, classical, author, piano.
I should be able to search all fields for the file itself.
>
>
> >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.
>
> 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 ..
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