On Tue, 21 Apr 1998, George wrote:
> Most likely, depends on how hard it is to switch based on what Sammy
> writes. (Assuming he wouldn't mind, in which case I'll write something
> myself which will take longer.)
If you're serious about wanting to include it, I don't think it would be
too difficult to change the asciificaiton to be a switched addition rather
than a replacement. It wouldn't require much more than renaming load_char
to binary_load_char and ascii_load_char and other similar functions.
I think I've eliminated the speed issue as a reason for sticking with
binary. I've mentioned already that there's a great deal of disk space
_saved_ by switching to ascii (and the new version will be even smaller
due to self-optimization). It's been mentioned that (assuming
tilde-protection) the only security risk is that someone with site access
won't need to know how to code to compromise the pfiles (and if that's
really an issue, I can include an option to protect ascii files from
anyone without moderate coding abilty). The inode use in ascii wouldn't
be an issue if I went with a single ascii file per player (which very few
people want).
Are there any reasons left for sticking with binary? In addition to the
space savings and readabilty of ascii, it's also much easier to add new
fields to, it doesn't need the char_file_u structure, and it's portable
across all platforms.
If you can think of any other advantages of binary or drawbacks of ascii,
please let me know. I'd like this next release of asciification to cover
most if not all bases so I don't have to touch it again :)
Sam
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