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From: lai@Apple.COM (Ed Lai)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Text file madness: diagnosis & prescription.
Message-ID: <37652@apple.Apple.COM>
Date: 6 Jan 90 17:34:18 GMT
References: <2706@aecom.yu.edu> <5900@ncar.ucar.edu> <1998@eric.mpr.ca> <5915@ncar.ucar.edu> <8315@cbnewsm.ATT.COM> <9505@spool.cs.wisc.edu>
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Organization: Apple Computer Inc, Cupertino, CA
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In article <9505@spool.cs.wisc.edu> tonyrich@titanic.cs.wisc.edu (Anthony Rich) writes:
>

I have deleted all that, but I think it is a good analysis.

>A disadvantage of special file types is that they make it hard to write
>general-purpose utilities that can be pipelined together in flexible ways
>(i.e., forming bigger tools out of several little ones).  That's why many
>Mac programs tend to be large, "try to do it all" programs rather than
>small, single-purpose utilities.
>

Actually I do not think that because data are typed means that it more
difficult to write utilities that can be pipelined together, it just mean that
you cannot plug together tools that are not meant to be plugged together,
a point that you already made. Then what if we need to plug 2" pipes (borrowing
analogy from plumbing) to 1" pipes? What you need is adaptors. Finally there
should be wildcard type that is universal (e.g. a hex dump tool can dump any
type of data into TEXT). If anybody have use the Clipboard magician DA, they
would see that this is the principle behind it.


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/* Edmund K. Lai                                               */
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