Re: Ideas for a new A2 site

[mdj <mdj.mdj@gmail.com>]

On Jul 30, 7:14 am, "Michael J. Mahon" <mjma...@aol.com> wrote:
> jonnosan wrote:
> > On Jul 29, 2:27 pm, Alex Lee <ale...@mac.com> wrote:
>
> >>If you'd like to help out, I suggest you go play Karateka, Captain
> >>Goodnight, Airheart, Ultima, Transylvania, take 20 to 30 screen grabs
> >>for each game, saving each screen grab as a .gif or .png (NOT as a
> >>JPG...it breaks my heart to see screen grabs saved in JPG, completely
> >>ruining the quality of image with compression artefacts)...and then
> >>hang tight for another 12 months or so until I MIGHT be ready to put a
> >>new site together. But that's asking too much, and would create a lot
> >>of doubling up for people if they take screen grabs of the same games...
>
> >>Has anyone got any ideas on creating a database on a comprehensive
> >>archive of screen grabs?
>
> > What would be helpful here is some standard archive format that
> > allowed for easy transport and machine parsing of everything to do
> > with a disk image.
>
> > For example, a zip archive with the following subdirectories
> > dsk - one or more dos order dsk images
> > pic - zero or more screenshots stored as png files
> > doc - documentation (in any format - eg text files, pdf, html, tif)
>
> > along with a text file in the top directory with a standard name and
> > some structured fields for (e.g.) name of program, publisher, disk
> > format (e.g. dos 3.3/prodos/other), etc. Sort of like the old
> > FILE_ID.DIZ from back in the day, but with a bit more formal
> > structure.
>
> Hmmm.  How about ShrinkIt, or even .zip?

That in conjunction with the XPackage format that is used by many apps
these days (for instance, Open Office)

Definiing it as such, and including the descriptive "metadata" as XML
as well would make it extremely easy to present the package on the
web, as well as make it simple for emulators, etc. to load the
package. A primary benefit for example would be allowing emulators to
easily switch between all the disk images relevant to an Application,
rather than forcing the user to choose the appropriate image file.

It's a lot of work though, particularly in making sure you don't
design yourself into a corner, and force the next generation to
replace rather than extend.

Matt