Let's develop an open-source media archive standard

From: Dwight K. Elvey <dwight.elvey_at_amd.com>
Date: Wed Aug 11 19:11:28 2004

>From: "Steve Thatcher" <melamy_at_earthlink.net>
>
>what is wrong with making things easier?
---snip---

Hi
 I'm not saying to make it impossible to do, just that it shouldn't
be considered as a primary purpose. Using an extendable language
like I've suggested, one can add such features. Part of the problem
is that when someone creates the archive, they may not even know
the file structure of the disk. I would expect the specification
to be broad enough to allow such. Still, the primary thing is
to be able to recreate the original material.
 To me this means that any input to some emulator may mean that
it requires some post processing. How would one know what some
some format a particular emulator wanted? How would a person always
know how to read the directory structure and be able to extract
files? If one wanted to work in all cases, I'd expect that the
person writing the emulator would provide the needed post processing
to extract such information. Otherwise, they'd only be able to
read archives of disk that were specifically created for their
system. Those archives that the person didn't know the file
structure would be useless unless.
 Such things are secondary functions. They shouldn't be restricted
from being used, it is just that the primary function should
be to capture the entire information in as close to the original
format as possible. Creating post processors could easily be
done as a separate outside function for special purposes.
Dwight
Received on Wed Aug 11 2004 - 19:11:28 BST