Re: best format for distribution (SHK? DSK? ZIP?)

[Ivan X <ivanxqz@yahoo.com>]

On 8/2/10 11:12 AM, in article
9c1f3cae-c871-4fc5-99e3-501fcab2c2f9@t5g2000prd.googlegroups.com, "Toinet"
<antoine.vignau@laposte.net> wrote:

> We used to other those two options on brutal-deluxe.fr (SHK & 2MG), we
> are now focused on the 2MG option only as it is easier to create and
> manage once downloaded on an emulator (Sweet16, Ciderpress...) or an a
> real machine (MountIt, ImageMaker...)

Ok, thanks (and thanks to all others for responding!)

Since all my software is 8-bit, I think I've decided that for native users
I'm going to provide .BXY (which incorporates SHK, or SDK if necessary), and
then for emulator people I will provide disk images: .PO for 140K ProDOS,
.DSK (DO) for 140K DOS 3.3 or no-DOS, and .HDV (PO) for 800K, as
appropriate.

So now, for images: Why 2MG? I realize that it has the advantage of
describing all common image types, but any 140K or 800K disk (DO/PO/NIB/HDV)
can be reasonably determined by its file suffix. Back in the 90's, Mac OS
and *nix users often omitted filename extensions so I saw the relevance, but
I'm not sure I do now that they are de rigeur for any distributed software.

What I like about the straight dump formats (like DO/PO/HDV) is that they're
elementally simple, every emulator supports them, and you can use any hex
editor on a host platform as though it were a sector editor (which is much
more difficult with a header). So again: Why 2MG?


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