On 8/3/2010 9:33 AM, rich12345 wrote:
On Jul 31, 12:11 pm, Ivan X<ivan...@yahoo.com> wrote:Hello A2 world, If I'm planning on distributing more of the Apple II software I've written on my web page, what's considered to be the best format(s) for distribution these days? So, what's best? DSK?DSK. You can use Contiki DSK downloader to create a 5.25 disk on a real apple II, and it is quick! Also ADTPRO, and a few other DSK to DISK utilities. DSK works on all emulators as well. sometimes downloading DSK corrupts the file, so you can rename them to DISKNAME.DSK.TXT and they should download properly, or ZIP them.
Making anything think a binary file is a text file seems like a recipe for disaster! Text is routinely mistreated in communications. Binary data will be encoded into 7-bit text and decoded automatically, safeguarding all the "special characters" it undoubtedly contains. I agree that .zip will be almost universally safe for transport, but it's problematic for Apple II's--especially 8-bit ones. Just *renaming* a file to .zip will get it there intact, but will too often cause the receiving machine to expect a real .zip and lead to problems--like trying to send a binary file as .jpg. ;-) -michael NadaNet 3.1 for Apple II parallel computing! Home page: http://home.comcast.net/~mjmahon/ "The wastebasket is our most important design tool--and it's seriously underused."