Re: Many File Formats: do they bother you?

[BLuRry <brendan.robert@gmail.com>]

On Wednesday, July 11, 2012 9:01:56 PM UTC-5, (unknown) 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 agree.    :)
> 
> In fact, I suggested the same thing here on c.s.a2 and c.e.a2 12+ years ago.  IIRC, my suggestion was met with many howls of rage and indignation from people who apparently love these formats and cannot imagine life without them.  IIRC, one guy said that there should be no DSK, DO, NIB files - and that *everything* should be in the pure formats (".sdk, .shk, .bxy).  LMAO ROFL.  If these people are still around, then they will no doubt be flaming here soon.
> 
> Until 1984/85, I was strictly an Apple ][, ][+, ][e and C=64 guy.  Then, I jumped ship to the PC (still had my Apple ][+ as well), but I have never owned or used a ][GS.  Like others above, I never had anything to do with ".sdk, .shk, .bxy and their ilk" until discovering Apple ][ emulators (for me, this was when I first got on the net back in early 1994, and the very first place I visited was on the emulators directory in SimTel).
> 
> Thanks to tools like CiderPress, handling ".sdk, .shk, .bxy and their ilk" is now a lot easier than it was.  Still a pain to have to go through the steps to decompress though.
> 
> Moose's Software Valley - Established July, 1996.

If it's worth anything, JACE mass storage supports raw directories and map them as virtual prodos volumes.  Essentially, it builds the directory block structure on the fly and updates it whenever files are changed.  I'm not sure how well large files work but I was able to load text files as z-basic source.

I should caution anyone using it to not get too excited: it's a read-only affair.  But still, if you download a ton of SHK files it might be a fun way to plow through them.

-B