realbasic-nug
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: WritePString weirdness...

To: REALbasic NUG <realbasic-nug at lists dot realsoftware dot com>
Subject: Re: WritePString weirdness...
From: Eric Williams <eric at oxalyn dot com>
Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2008 07:16:33 -0700
Delivered-to: listarchive at realsoftware dot com
Delivered-to: realbasic-nug at lists dot realsoftware dot com
References: <226027DE-9E67-4701-90AD-12E8F3383CF6 at rbclass dot com> <A652AB13-FCF7-4D95-B6B1-5EC6EC3E84DE at inspiringapps dot com> <3E14F3DA-1A0F-47A7-A23A-5561C8EFDFC3 at rbclass dot com> <A0720DC7-6E68-4825-B1E7-06FA772B07E7 at inspiringapps dot com> <A08DAFF0-4131-4C31-BE88-965126CC576F at rbclass dot com> <09004169-C758-401C-BF6E-6FB615336097 at rbclass dot com> <1BD9DBC6-83AA-42FF-912E-010229927261 at sentman dot com> <6D8444CF-8F0F-4A8A-8117-B4C6E4EEE06C at rbclass dot com> <2061F18F-62B0-4CDB-BCAC-6EE65F613122 at inspiringapps dot com> <2F88C8F7-913B-48BB-A96F-D9932B096431 at mac dot com>
On Mar 31, 2008, at 5:38 AM, Arnaud Nicolet wrote:

> Le 30 mars 08 à 23:24 (soir), Joe Strout a écrit:
>
>> It's really quite simple: an app that writes text to a file has to
>> decide how to represent that text as bytes.  An app that reads text
>> from a file has to decide how to interpret bytes as text.  When those
>> decisions are not the same, then the text that's read isn't the same
>> as the text that was written.  Nothing mysterious about that.
>
> I'm thinking of a feature request for RB but I don't know if it's
> technically possible:
>
> On each write of PStrings, RB automatically inserts the encoding of
> the string (e.g as an integer), in a way that does not disturb how
> PStrings work (e.g, after the PString).
> On read of a PString, RB automatically reads the PString and then the
> encoding, which it uses to convert the read PString.
>
> With this method, a beginner or someone who does not want to "care"
> about encodings (e.g a local app) doesn't have any problems.
> As far as I know, we can't do this programatically: we can't know the
> "name" or "value" of the encoding of <this particular> string and we
> can't either convert back something to an encoding. Can RS
> technically do that?

As has been pointed out, PStrings are very, very old and very, very  
limited. I don't see why REAL would devote many resources to solving  
this problem, especially since it would break all the existing code  
that uses WritePString because the files would suddenly be  
incompatible. Anyone using PStrings to write out encoded text should  
bite the bullet and convert to some other method.

Eric Williams
Oxalyn Software
http://software.oxalyn.com/

AE Monitor
http://software.oxalyn.com/AEMonitor/


_______________________________________________
Unsubscribe or switch delivery mode:
<http://www.realsoftware.com/support/listmanager/>

Search the archives:
<http://support.realsoftware.com/listarchives/lists.html>


<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>