Re: RFP: CompoundStorage document

[Jody Goldberg <jody gnome org>]

On Thu, Apr 18, 2002 at 02:24:01PM +1000, Martin Sevior wrote:
> 
> Ok I get this now. I just ask that this new file format be closely based
> on existing formats. I've spent a lot of time trying to  get 100%
> compatibility between abiword and rtf (import and export) with just our
> current feature set. Adding an extra format that must be 100% supported is
> just lots of work and I wanted to be sure there was a strong motivation to
> do it.
> 
> My experience import/exporters was that it's "easy" get basic stuff right,
> it's really, really hard to get all the little bits right.

EEep! no no no.  That was exactly what I do NOT mean.
The goal here is to provide a containing file format, not the
content.  What I'm working on is basicly a sane api for ole and zip
files.  The individual apps will still stuff their own magic xml/bit
streams into the containers, but at least there will be some common
apis for managing the containers, and if enough of us the them we
can get some supporting tools (eg file type sniffers) to recognize
them.

This is not some yogic exercise in meta-design.  I suspect the
project will progress alot more effectively if we focus on small
coherent sharable code.  Sharing a common xml dtd is not high on
that list.  Although some sax parsing utilities may be nice :-)