On Sat, Aug 07, 2004, David A. Desrosiers wrote:
> Would it be possible to make the viewer do this automagically, upon
> opening an "older" format document?
Wrong direction ;-)
The problem with a non-backwards compatible change to the Plucker
format is that only new viewers would be able to read the format.
Old viewers would report the Plucker document to be "corrupt".
The script would be used to change the record header into a format
old viewers can handle. New viewers would be able to handle both
formats and we could also include an option to convert "old"
documents to the new format.
> The problem I see with writing a script
> to convert the documents, is that we'll be in the mess of cross-platform
> compatibility issues.
I would write it in perl or python. It's "just" a matter of changing
the header for each record.
> Also, the other bit of a problem, is having to convert the documents
> to the _older_ format.
The script is first and foremost for those users using a viewer on a
different platform, i.e. to make it possible for them to read documents
that use the new record format. We can't control when/if viewers on
other platforms will support the new format. The Palm viewer we have
full control over and can update to the new format (we can even release
"patched" versions of an older release that supports the new format).
> For example, if someone submits a Plucker document
> to MemoWare or PalmGear in the "new" format, and someone without the latest
> viewer tries to read/run it..
Well, that's the problem I'm trying to solve ;-)
> A script would be better in the short term,
It is intended to be a short term solution...
/Mike
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