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Opening book format proposal - Computer content

Posted By: Michael Petch
Date: Monday, 31 January 2011, at 6:29 a.m.

In Response To: Opening book format proposal - Computer content (eXtreme Gammon)

Hi Xavier,

First, I think this is a good idea. Second, standardizing on an open format should benefit all the bots.

You mention that you preferred a fixed structure. I may be reading this wrong but there seems to be some variability. I read this as the file starts with a structure of entryType 0 (Main File header). There is exactly one of these. That is followed by a variable number of entryType 1 (Notes) as suggested by "can have multiple record", followed by a variable number of position records. How do you know how many Notes records there are? Or when saved to the "real" binary file are the record types part of the data structure itself (I don't know off hand what Delphi does when it writes a record).

Regarding Delphi strings, are strings saved in binary as old style pascal strings (where the length is hidden before the characters, and the string is NOT null terminated), or are these strings ultimately saved as string of characters with a null terminator?

One concern I would have with this structure is efficient searching. I may have missed something but would some unique hash of each record and some type of index go with this?

Thanks Xavier!

Messages In This Thread

• Opening book format proposal - Computer content
  eXtreme Gammon -- Monday, 31 January 2011, at 4:19 a.m.
  • Opening book format proposal - Computer content
    Michael Petch -- Monday, 31 January 2011, at 6:29 a.m.
    • Xg2 and this file format
      Michael Petch -- Monday, 31 January 2011, at 7:10 a.m.
  • Looking at the future
    Michael Petch -- Monday, 31 January 2011, at 6:55 a.m.
  • Opening book format proposal - Computer content
    KenB -- Monday, 31 January 2011, at 12:49 p.m.
  • Opening book format proposal - Computer content
    Ian Shaw -- Monday, 31 January 2011, at 3:00 p.m.
    • Opening book format proposal - Computer content
      Marty Storer -- Monday, 31 January 2011, at 3:17 p.m.
      • Opening book format proposal - Computer content
        Tom Keith -- Monday, 31 January 2011, at 5:45 p.m.
    • Opening book format proposal - Computer content
      Rich Munitz -- Monday, 31 January 2011, at 9:18 p.m.
      • Opening book format proposal - Computer content
        Frank Berger -- Monday, 31 January 2011, at 9:52 p.m.
        • Opening book format proposal - Computer content
          Rich Munitz -- Monday, 31 January 2011, at 10:50 p.m.
          • obsolescence
            Chuck Bower -- Tuesday, 1 February 2011, at 12:50 a.m.
            • obsolescence
              Michael Petch -- Tuesday, 1 February 2011, at 1:19 a.m.
              • obsolescence
                Jason Lee -- Tuesday, 1 February 2011, at 1:59 a.m.
                • Did you know?
                  KenB -- Tuesday, 1 February 2011, at 2:54 a.m.
            • obsolescence
              Frank Berger -- Tuesday, 1 February 2011, at 10:09 p.m.
            • obsolescence
              Rich Munitz -- Tuesday, 1 February 2011, at 10:52 p.m.
  • Opening book format proposal - Computer content
    Frank Berger -- Monday, 31 January 2011, at 6:30 p.m.
    • Opening book format proposal - Computer content
      Michael Petch -- Monday, 31 January 2011, at 10:27 p.m.
  • "Opening Book" format may be too specific
    Michael Petch -- Monday, 31 January 2011, at 10:47 p.m.
  • Playing with tagged formats
    Tom Keith -- Tuesday, 1 February 2011, at 4:28 p.m.
    • Playing with tagged formats
      Ian Shaw -- Wednesday, 2 February 2011, at 9:28 a.m.
  • Opening book format proposal - Computer content
    storm -- Friday, 4 February 2011, at 9:12 p.m.