Re: [coldsync-hackers] p5-palm

[Andrew Arensburger <arensb+CShackers@ooblick.com>]

On Wed, 1 Nov 2000, Ryan VanderBijl wrote:
> I think i miscommunicated. I never meant to suggest that any of the
> functionality was missing. I just think that the functionality is,
> perhaps, in the wrong place -- if that makes any sense? For example,
> the Palm::PDB  seems like it should be a relatively simple thing --
> read's in a given file, etc.  It doesn't seem to need to need any 
> smarts of how to handle the various creator/type matching.  When I
> first tried using it, i didn't expect that, and it bothered me.

        Palm/PDB.pm does parse PDB files in a generic way. Perhaps
Palm::Raw shouldn't have been made separate from Palm::PDB. Oh, well.
        But Palm::PDB has to decide, at some point, how to parse the
database records. One obvious approach is to extract the creator/type and
pass the buck to a set of specialized functions. This is what the current
Palm::PDB does.
        The other obvious approach would be to read the PDB without
parsing the records, i.e., return a list of data strings. Then have the
user's script call some set of specialized functions to parse those
strings. This strikes me as inelegant and wasteful.

> So what kind of structure would the Palm::PRC have. If you say that
> the Palm::PRC files are fairly different that ::PDB, then I definitely
> think that a Palm::PRC should be made. What other functionality would
> be common for a PRC file?

        The way I envision it, Palm::PRC would be very similar to
Palm::Raw : if you have

        use Palm::PRC;

        my $prc = new Palm::PDB;
        $prc->Load("myfile.prc");

then @{$prc->{resources}} will just be a list of raw data strings.
        However, Palm::PRC should allow you to define functions or classes
to parse specific types of resources (based on the resource type). Thus,
you might write

        use Bitmaps;            # Parses 'tBMP' resources
        use Forms;              # Parses 'tFRM' resources

        my $prc = new Palm::PDB;
        $prc->Load("myfile.prc");

Now, @{$prc->{resources}} will contained references to parsed bitmaps and
forms; all other resources will be raw data strings, as above.

-- 
Andrew Arensburger                      Actually, these _do_ represent the
arensb@ooblick.com                      opinions of ooblick.com!
                        Generic Tagline V 6.01


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