Re: GS/OS for xgs emulator?

[shack@deimos.frii.com (Randy Shackelford)]

In article <5g9bdk$hi2@bmerhc5e.bnr.ca>,
Jeffrey Robertson <jeffr@bnr.ca> wrote:
>In article <5g6qeb$i5v@inet-nntp-gw-1.us.oracle.com>,
>Christopher D. Heer <cheer@i.hate.spam> wrote:
>>It was 12 Mar 1997 02:27:20 GMT.  I was reading instead of working.  And Nathan 
>>Mates <nathan@visi.com> said:
>>
>>>   The major problem is that the emulator authors have chosen to shaft
>>>the publically documented, universally accepted, and very useful Apple
>>>II standard of transmitting files and disks
>>
>>Can you prove this unfounded, unsubstantiated assertion that emulator authors 
>>are deliberately shafting people?
>
>A more accurate analysis of the situation is: authors chose to ignore the
>ShrinkIt standard, and use a different method.  This unquestionably
>has the effect of "shafting people" (ie, making their live more
>difficult).  It's unlikely that this was their intent, but they justly
>deserve the criticism they receive for not forseeing this obvious
>result of their decision.

It may have been before your time in II-dom, but back in '88 or so, there was
no standard archive format. The closest thing was using binary II with 
"squeezed" files. As Andy Nicholas wrote in a Call-A.P.P.L.E. article which
discusses the NuFX archive spec, this type of use was beyond what binary II
was intended for. This was an impetus for designing NuFX and writing the 
Shrinkit apps to use it.

There is a similar situation at the moment with disk images. No standard
format exists, and using NuFX is beyond the scope of what it was designed
for. Indeed, Shrinkit GS itself warns against making full disk archives,
which presumably is what Nathan wishes to see as the standard image format.
Considering how much he hates emulators, it's a head scratcher to me why
he seems to care so much what format they use, but that's a topic for
another thread.

As an example, take a look at the Mac setup. There's a standard archive
format (Stuffit) and a standard disk image format (Disk Copy). No one in
the Mac camp is trying to substitute one for the other.

So what kind of standard should there be? Well, DOS ordered, 143360 byte
binary images seem to be universal for 5.25 disks, so I would propose that
as the official 5.25 image format. These are easy to make; I wrote a quick-
and-dirty SYS program to make these files nearly three years ago. For 3.5
disks, I'd say a ProDOS block ordered 800K binary image would be best.
A program to make these would be even simpler.

>As usual, Nathan was overly harsh in his phrasing, but was right
>on the money in terms of the facts.

I disagree. Typically, as in the forked-file-to-ProDOS-8 situation, Nathan
seems more inclined to bitch and gripe rather than help work on a solution.
-- 
Randy Shackelford                                 
shack@frii.com