cross-platform compress & decompress

[Alex Rice]

On Dec 1, 2003, at 4:27 PM, Richard Gaskin wrote:

> I don't think it's a bug as much as a very useful feature with 
> unintended
> consequences for binary data:  in old versions of the engine, folks
> complained that data stored in user properties did not have the 
> automatic
> cross-platform conversion as text in fields enjoy.  So several 
> versions ago
> this was changed to allow the same for user props.


> The downside to the change is that for the minority of user props 
> containing
> binary data this conversion will cause trouble, often making the data
> unusable (as is the case if the data is compressed).

When did that happen? I thought that custom properties are a place 
where binary data was really safe in Rev.

In either case I misunderstood Mark's question. I thought he meant 
compressing data X on two different platforms would yield 2 different 
chunks of binary data.

> Maybe we need a flag to note whether a property is text or binary?  
> Should
> it be a stack property?

Just as a transcript notation you mean? Sounds useful

Alex Rice <alex at mindlube.com> | Mindlube Software | 
<http://mindlube.com>

what a waste of thumbs that are opposable
to make machines that are disposable  -Ani DiFranco