Question on .rev file format

[Richard Gaskin]

Steve Gehlbach wrote:

> I am a big fan of VHLLs, but one thing I notice that bothers me about
> Revolution is the binary (proprietary?) format of the .rev files.  I
> tried changing one byte of these files with a hex editor and the IDE
> refuses to load it.  This makes corruption quite easy and a good way to
> lose a lot of work.  Also (maybe more importantly) version control (CVS)
> is not very useful on binary files.
> 
> Is anyone else troubled by this and are there any solutions, ie, ways to
> dump the stack in text (completely and reversibly), or corrupted file
> recovery tools?

On the bright side, it's not much different from other proprietary binary
file formats which drive most software, with one major benefit:  automatic
backups.

While there have been very few cases of true file corruption reported in
many years across the 12 supported OSes, the possibility exists and is
accounted for.  Before the engine writes to the file it first makes a backup
of the file, using the same name as the opriginal but preceded with a tilde
(e.g., "~myFile.rev").  In the unlikely event of file corruption, you have
the last successfully saved copy waiting for you -- just toss the bad one,
remove the tilde, and you're back in action, having lost no more than the
last few minutes since your last save.

If you'd like multiple backups Chipp Walters has a nifty tool avalable to
automate this. I couldn't find the URL at his Web site, but I believe he's
included it in the Stacks index in RevNet -- in Rev just choose
Developer->Plugins->GoRevNet

I wonder why CVS doesn't work well with binaries?  For large multimedia
projects that would seem critical, no?

Personally I like the checksum enforcement in Rev files.  It means if
someone tried to crack my file they're likely to render it unsuable.  And
with less-well-enforced checksums you'll still have a problem if someone
edited the file, only you won;t be able to discover the problem until that
part of the file is accessed; at least with Rev you know up front, no
surprises waiting to be discovered down the road.


Side note about VHLLs: I'm collecting notes for a paper on VHLLs, and would
love more info about other nonb-xTalk systems, esp. those that support GUIs.
If you have experience along those lines please email me offlist and let me
know which language you use and I may have some questions for ya' if you
have the time.  Thanks. :)

-- 
 Richard Gaskin 
 Fourth World Media Corporation
 Developer of WebMerge: Publish any database on any Web site
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