Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!tnc!m0154
From: m0154@tnc.UUCP (GUY GARNETT)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: A3000UX competition
Message-ID: <634@tnc.UUCP>
Date: 20 Dec 90 17:28:27 GMT
References: <6352@crash.cts.com>
Reply-To: m0154@tnc.UUCP (GUY GARNETT)
Organization: The Next Challenge, Fairfax, Va.
Lines: 28

In article <6352@crash.cts.com> seanc@pro-party.cts.com (Sean Cunningham) writes:
> 
>IFF is an Amiga standard, and one that sets it apart from just about every
>other system.  I don't believe it was ever supposed to become an "industry"
>standard.  IBM and Apple haven't been successful at this, so why should
>Commodore?
> 
>The only thing that's close to being anything close to an industry standard is
>GIF.  Not PICT, PICT2, TIFF, PCX, etc.
> 
>Sean

If you read the original IFF docs in the RKM, it was very clear that
Electronic Arts (who wrote the original standard) intended IFF to be
an industry-wide standard; they specified byte ordering and other
processor dependencies so that the standard would be portable from
Amiga to MsDOS to whatever.

In some ways, they succeeded.  I recently was playing an IBM version
of "Bar Games" at a computer store.  Just for kicks, I decided to dump
out the data files, and sure enough the first part of the file
contained "FORM" and "ILBM" ...

IFF is never going to be a true industry standard, but for what it
covers, it is very good.  Now if we could get things other than
graphics and sound standardized ... like text ... or databases ...

Wildstar