Am 12 Aug 2004 0:00 meinte Steve Thatcher:
> I agree in all what Hans had to say except for how
> data would be stored. This is supposed to be an archive
> format which would in my view preclude getting data from
> the outside world.
Well, a clear yes her ... and a no :)
Of course an achive of a media or a set of media has to
be cosistent and one pice - still it might be usefull to
split it up into several files (as someone already suggestes:
having format in one file and data in another, which can
even be a data file in Inel-Hex or whatever) which then
again are supposed to be handled together - e.g. in a
zip archive. After all, we're not reinventing the archiver
itself.
> My only other concern as I have stated before was that
> data should not be an integral part of the media. If a
> device happens to be a tape drive, the data on the tape
> still separates into "file" type data and overhead data
> required for the tape physical format.
> Enbedding the "file" tyupe data inside of the physical
> format makes the data inaccessible without special knowledge.
Thanks for using the tape as example. Well, take a look at
the other mail... where would you put the header blocks ?
they are both, structure and data, since they where accessable
by the applications - If I open a tape file, I can go and
read only the data, but I may also access the headers. Even
more (at least on real computers *G*), a programm can write
it's own headers - there are even special user headers defined.
That was also one of the functions wicht made the PET special.
with a little additional programming, you could write application
specific header blocks, that where properly handled by the 'OS'
(read ignored :).
Gruss
H.
--
VCF Europa 6.0 am 30.April und 01.Mai 2005 in Muenchen
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Received on Thu Aug 12 2004 - 09:33:24 BST