On 7/13/2012 3:37 PM, D Finnigan wrote:
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.
What you've just described is the engine of CiderPress. In one end, it knows how to decode the magic numbers of lots of file formats, and lots of the quirks and bugs about each. In the middle is a common underlying representation of disk and filesystem information. Out the other end, you can manipulate what's there, or convert the whole thing to another output format (shk, sdk, dsk, nib, whatever).