FormatConverter, was Re: Many File Formats: do they bother you?

[dog_cow@macgui.com (D Finnigan)]

David Schmidt wrote:
> On 7/13/2012 9:38 AM, roughana wrote:
>> On Thursday, July 12, 2012 7:13:39 AM UTC+10, schmidtd wrote:
>>> .sdk, .shk, .bxy and their ilk bother me no end.  The quicker they are
>>> expunged from all repositories, the better, in my opinion (an opinion
>>> not shared by all, I realize).
>>
>> I am surprised by all the flak that the Shrinkit format is copping in
>> this thread.
>> Binary II and Shrinkit preserve the Apple II filetypes and auxiliary
>> flags. Things which are important for applications to deal with file
>> content correctly in ProDOS and GS/OS.
>> If you just zipped an AWP file, the receiver would not be able to deal
>> with it without adjusting the filetype and auxiliary information. Now
>> that's a step I would rather not have to do.
>>
>> Sure, if everything is on a Disk Image, then this is contained within the
>> image. So I guess the relevance is diminishing today somewhat.
> 
> Exactly so.  The disk image itself is a wrapper, much like .shk - except 
> there's no extra step involved because a disk image is a useable entity 
> in and of itself.  To users of emulators, and those that are accustomed 
> to moving disk images back and forth as a whole, that's exactly how they 
> operate.  For those that came up through the nascent GS internet era, 
> it's not.
>

The germ of an idea I had a few months ago is now developing.

My idea is to solve the problem from the Downloads server side, and to that
end I am developing technology which I hereby dub FormatConverter™. I am
teaching it to recognize each file format by examining the magic number or
other identifying characteristics.

Then the next step is to write encoder and decoder algorithms for each major
format. I can rely on existing source code and documentation for help. I've
already got code that can catalog DOS 3.3 and ProDOS disks.

The results will be astounding:

It doesn't matter what the native format of a file is. No one has to know. I
could take a .SHK file and turn it into a .dsk or a .zip, or convert a DOS
3.3 disk image into a ProDOS disk image. Binscii, Binary II, base64, all
will be decoded automatically as needed. Any format (except maybe nib), any
direction.

The user will choose at download time what format he wants the file to be
in. The most popular format will be automatically selected.

As a side feature, I will add the ability to email any file as a MIME
attachment. This is actually an old idea, but old ideas can be good. On more
than one occasion, I have used Ewen Wannop's SAM2 email client to send and
receive files and documents from an Apple IIgs. A user can send an email to
a special request address, and the server will send back the requested file.

-- 
]DF$
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