Re: File Suggestions?

[Brendan Murphy <bmurphy@truenorthsoftware.com>]

Mark O'Neill wrote:
> Before I go ahead and code some binary version of my XML-based
> document file I'd just like to ask if there's a right and wrong way to
> save and read a binary file for this purpose having never really used
> binary files before.
>
> Background:
>
> Basically my app currently reads and writes all of its data in xml
> format. It is for the main purely text but also contains images which
> are stored in the xml as file references by EncodeBase64. (I initially
> stored the pictures to the xml file with Norman's pictureToString
> routine but a saved file would grow so large that it wasn't  
> practical.)
> But now I need to add more images to the file and (more importantly)
> make the file portable, in which case file references just won't do
> and so I'm f going down the binary file route.
>
> So my question is - what's the best approach to storing different
> kinds of text and images in one binary file for use as a document file
> by my app? Any pitfalls/ schoolboy errors to watch out for?
I would embed all the images in the XML as you originally
suggested. What you need to do is compress the XML stream as a
whole just before you save it.

An alternative solution is to create a virtual volume and store
the XML and pictures in it. This would solve the file reference
problem, but you still need to deal with the compression problem.


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