Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!pepper!cmcmanis
From: cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: How satisfied are you with IFF?
Message-ID: <68695@sun.uucp>
Date: 16 Sep 88 17:29:44 GMT
References: <3427@crash.cts.com>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Reply-To: cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
Lines: 40

In article <3427@crash.cts.com> haitex@pnet01.cts.com (Wade Bickel) writes:
->[for the mithical line-eater (is there really such a thing?)]
--No it was fixed in all US sites by 1985--

->        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.
True.

->        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.

First what was your misunderstanding? IFF can be parsed fairly readily by
most "types" of parsers primarily because it's grammar is self consistent.

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

Yes if you decided to redesign it simply because you blew it while reading
the documents. Please, don't be offended but there are already "other" 
standards that are competing with IFF and you should really check out one
of those first before making a subtly different IFF. (GIF and TIFF come to
mind)

->        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.

Please, let us know what the "flaw" is first and *then* ask us if we want
to change it.


--Chuck McManis
uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis   BIX: cmcmanis  ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com
These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.