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From: haitex@pnet01.cts.com (Wade Bickel)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: How satisfied are you with IFF?
Message-ID: <3427@crash.cts.com>
Date: 15 Sep 88 13:17:06 GMT
Sender: news@crash.cts.com
Organization: People-Net [pnet01], El Cajon CA
Lines: 36

[for the mithical line-eater (is there really such a thing?)]


        Having had to get into EA's IFF code this summer, I've been more
than a little disappointed.  The code is cumbersome and hard to work with.

        So, I started working on a re-vamp.  Recently I spoke with Stu
Furgeson and discovered that I had minor misconception as to how the
format was defined.  In particular, the form specifier (such as ILBM) is not
a chunk.  This makes my elegant solution to the whole problem un-workable,
requiring a much less generic parser design.

        So the question I wish to pose is;  Would you (the Amiga community)
reject a re-design of the current IFF standard?

        In order to maintain compatablility, I figure all current formats
would have to be supported by any forthcomming library, to allow old programs
to be functional.

        I realize this would not be a completely painless change, but the
current definition is flawed and if we don't do something about it, it must
die eventually.  I'd hate to see some other machine support a different IFF
standard which is clearly superior, and thus hurt the Amiga, which is still
clinging to a flawed standard in the belief that any standard is better than
none.


                                                Thanks,



                                                        Wade.

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Opionions expressed are mine, and not necessarily those of my employer.