Re: Translators (Re: State of the X clipboard, and perhaps a solution)

[Thorsten Wilms <t_w_ freenet de>]

On Fri, Apr 23, 2004 at 02:05:59PM -0500, Jerry Haltom wrote:
> I do agree with this. However, I have to wonder how much difficulty it
> is for every app to build translators for every format it supports.
> 
> What about two translators for the same type that behave differently?
> This works fine when you have a company like Be in the center dictating
> things, but we don't. Example, what about two MP3 codecs for copying MP3
> data. Which one gets used? We know there are a number out there...
> commercial programs might want to provide there own.

I don't know how BeOS's translator framework works. 
But in this context with handling clipboard, I would say every application 
would provide a module for its internal representation.
This module would allow transformation into and from matching general format 
(plain bitmap, simple text, markup ...).
Other modules would provide support for common formats like png, rtf ...

And competing implementation would be dealt with just as it happens 
now with libraries and functional equivalent apps ...
Or think about mime and default apps + 'Open with'.


---
Thorsten Wilms