FileStream encoding (Re: New SqueakMap)
Yoshiki Ohshima
yoshiki at squeakland.org
Thu Apr 13 15:43:43 UTC 2006
Martin,
> as Andreas noted you indeed seem to think that FileStream is or should
> be a text file stream.
It is not that simple.
* Today, it is both #text and #binary in Squeak, anyway.
* If we talk about its default, Squeak's default has been text and
code built around assumes that. (So, in a sense, it
is a text file stream by default.)
* Strictly speaking, it is not logically correct to open a .gif file
as a text stream with any encoding conversion, including no-convertion.
* (The Stream chops off the malformed data is different issue.)
* For mid- and longer term, separate the responsibility is a good
thing. We'll have two or more things, perhaps one is a wrapper
stream of another so the question whether "it" is what or not will
(hopefully) become an unissue.
> Well, I think otherwise. There are myriads of
> other structured data types than text and that means that raw byte
> handling is different from all of them, because it is their base.
I'm not disagreeing with that.
> The name FileStream does not specify the contents of the file and thus
> it is natural to think of it as the underlying and unspecified byte-handler.
I'm not entirely sure about your suggestion. Are you suggesting:
1 to change the default soon?
2 to change it to #binary to be a unspecified byte-handler?
3 to change it to #text and no-conversion, as Göran?
4 or, just stating it should be so?
I agree with 4 in a sense that the thing at the bottom is bytes. For
3, not so sure. For 1 and 2, I would disagree.
-- Yoshiki
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