Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!oliveb!tymix!antares!jms
From: jms (joe smith)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: How satisfied are you with IFF?
Summary: In what way is it flawed?
Message-ID: <155@antares.UUCP>
Date: 16 Sep 88 19:05:42 GMT
References: <3427@crash.cts.com>
Sender: jms@antares.UUCP
Reply-To: jms@antares.UUCP (joe smith)
Organization: Tymnet QSATS, San Jose CA
Lines: 24

I don't understand your posting.  IFF compares favorable to X.409, is
much better than GIF (by having self identifying sections), and is self
consistent as documented.  What in particular bothers you?  The fact that
the top level descriptors are 12 bytes instead of 8?  This is not a flaw.
To do it any other way would invalidate the concept for "FORM", "LIST", "CAT".

>         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.

First you need to prove that the current standard really is inferior (and not
merely just difficult for novice programmers) and then you need to demonstrate
your new proposed standard - not just say "it should be changed".

If the question is "will we accept a major and unnecessary change to IFF so
that one person's elegant hack will work", my vote is a resounding NO.

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