OSLibSupport Choices

[David J. Ruck]

On 30 Nov 2000 Tony van der Hoff <OSLib at mk-net.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> Given that it doesn't conform to the Choices protocol, it can be
> considered to be bugged; even so, backwards compatibility will be an
> issue. I don't think it involves a lot of work, and (at first sight) I
> like your MessageTrans idea, so one day... ;-)

It makes reading very much easier, but I am undecided what to do about
writing the file. The simple option (and what I currently do) is just
to overwrite any existing file with all the options, generated by simple
fprintf statements.

Another alternative would be to only replace existing lines with new
contents. This has the advantage of preserving comments in the file, and
offers a degree for forwards compatibility, as any new choice items from
later versions of the software will be ignored but preserved.

I dont know how useful this is in practice, but I like the messagetrans
format as it offers both backwards and fordwards compatibity by ignoring
lines it doesn't understand, and lines which aren't present can be auto-
matically given default values when reading. So it makes sense to take
advantage of this when writing.

Cheers
---Dave

BTW I hope this reaches the list, as whoever is responsible for the
    compton.nu domain started forwarding wmail to compton.co.uk last
    night.

-- 
____________________________________________________________________________

  David J. Ruck    Phone: +44- (0)7974 108301    Email: druck at freeuk.com
____________________________________________________________________________