Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!van-bc!
From: lphillips@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca (Larry Phillips)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Are applications using the Clipboard?
Keywords: IFF, CAT, FTXT, ILBM, Clipboard, Applications.
Message-ID: <2250@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca>
Date: 19 Nov 90 19:15:05 GMT
Lines: 36
Return-Path: <lpami!lphillips>
To: van-bc!rnews

In <1990Nov19.114706.6762@ida.liu.se>, micja@IDA.LiU.SE (Michael Jansson) writes:
>In article <2235@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca> lphillips@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca (Larry Phillips) writes:

>>In my opinion, the seeming insistence on IFF data format has severely limited
>>the number of people who are willing to use the clipboard.  

>Yes, and it has to be that so that applications has a common 'language'.
>I can not see how it could have done otherwise, given that the format of
>the clip-data must be generic, i.e. usable for many different kinds of
>data. It is a bit hard to handle IFF-files even if you do have an
>iff-library.  Its one of those bad-but-necessary-things. Right!?

Well, how's this for starters.... allow (I know it's _allowed_, but more like
condone), IFF and ASCII both. ASCII is reasonably easy to differentiate from
IFF, since readable text-only data could only conform to the IFF format by an
extremely unlikely set of data. Barring differentiation by content alone,
perhaps a suggestion of using a single value at the beginning to specify IFF or
ASCII would have done it.

I feel that given encouragement to include ASCII as an acceptable format for
clip data, _many_ folks would have gone for it in their programs. With the
clipboard in comon use, pressure on the programmers to utilize IFF for sound,
graphics, and text containing special attributes would have come from the user
community.

But... it may be too late for this. More's the pity.

-larry

--
The only things to survive a nuclear war will be cockroaches and IBM PCs.
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|   //   Larry Phillips                                                 |
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