Re: GS/OS for xgs emulator?

[Walter C Hsueh <hsuehw@ecf.toronto.edu>]

On 12 Mar 1997, Nathan Mates wrote:
>    Before you shove your foot any further up your mouth, would you
> mind at least taking 5 minutes to understand what data formats things
> are in, so you don't act so clueless in public?

You treat everyone who doesn't know as much as you do this way?
Not everyone knows that you maintain the enormous FAQ, where it is,
and that you attempt to police c.s.a2.  No need for hostility.


>    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-- .SHK files. They've gone
> off on some mostly irrelevant tangent for disk images, which is real
> Apple II unfriendly, stupid, and a waste of everyone's time. Your
> problem lies with the emulators, NOT Apple, disk formats, or anything
> else.

Before you go off and rant a generalized (unfounded) judgement,
consider the following issues.

Regardless of what you may think, I'm sure that there are plenty of
reasons why emulators, specifically XGS, have their own disk image
format.  In the DOS world, it's common for the first few bytes of a
file to identify the format (no resource fork).  As well, there are
disk writeprotect issues, and the fact that the .SHK format is
compressed.

I don't know much about prodos block ordering, but I do know that
manipulating data in compressed format (Shrinkit uses LZW, no?) is
not the easiest thing to do, especially for random access.  Never
heard of randomly accessing data in a run-length encoded file.

So there is a logical reasoning for the file structure of disk
images..not irrelevant, as you claim.


> >But anyways, I'm not some sort of wild-eyed, ahoy matey software pirate. 
> >I'm just trying to get the stuff I need to make xgs useful.  
> 
>    You're just some misinformed wannabe pirate trying the wrong way to
> make something useful. Tip: find the authors and hammer a clue into
> them. Or write the necessary code yourself.

Tip:  tell that to all the emulator authors.  I'm sure they'll
appreciate your words.


Regards,

Walter