Hey Wulf!

Nov 16 06:50 06, Wulf C. Krueger wrote to Maurice Kinal:

 WCK> Zip has been ported to virtually any platform as free open-source 
 WCK> software. Your distribution has it, too - regardless of which you 
 WCK> use. :-)

Just a sec ... nope no zip.  What distribution do you think is mine?

 MK>> Nothing like that here.

 WCK> Maybe, but it still would be useful here.

Sure.  Some people seem to like that sort of thing but I cannot see why it
would be needed or a requirement Fido-wise.  I also don't see why any
commercial software would be written into any protocols, specs, or anything
of that nature especially when that same software cannot make any
assurances of continued usage over the years.  It is one thing for any
sysop to use or desire a particular whatever they find useful at the time
but to make that a standard is extremely questionable and yet that seems to
have happened in the past and all of us are haunted by it, zip format being
a primary example although there are other examples having the same result.

 SD>>> PKT may be replaced with XML.
 MK>> Don't use that.  Is it better 

 WCK> Compared to plain text? Of course. We're dealing with structured 
 WCK> data here so XML beats plain text easily in this context.

Only if you use it.  I have nothing against those who do.

 WCK> You could always transform XML to virtually any text-based format. 

You could transform any text-based format to XML or whatever.  Also a
text-based format can be easily converted into a streamed character format
which is more suited to old fashioned POTS based serial modem style
format(s).  Far more versitile for backwards compatibilty whereas SQL, XML,
etc. isn't necessarily that adaptable wrt older or even newer technology.

Life is good,
Maurice

--- Msged/LNX 6.2.0