[darcs-users] Darcs and binary files question

[Samuel A. Falvo II]

On Saturday 03 July 2004 06:31 am, David Roundy wrote:
> Mostly, I haven't optimized the space use of binary files simply
> because they don't seem particularly useful, and aren't very
> interesting (mostly because they shouldn't commute).  I know that
> there are people who use them, and I have one in the darcs repository
> (the logo, in PNG format).

Understood.  I was asking because I'm going to undertake some Forth 
software development, and I'm the kind of guy that prefers blocks to 
files.

Blocks do not have carriage returns or other control characters; a single 
block is a fixed 1024 byte `index card', which more often than not is 
used to hold source code, laid out as 64 columns and 16 rows.  Unused 
regions of a block are just padded out with spaces.  Used this way, 
blocks are sometimes also called `screens.'

Therefore, as far as Darcs would be concerned, if I were to add the Forth 
environment's block file to the source tree, it'd look like a text file 
with only *one* 1024*N (where N is the number of blocks in the source 
I'm working on) character long line.

I wouldn't worry about supporting something like this.  There are other 
solutions I can persue.  But if Darcs did proper differencing on binary 
files, I could use that to manage my blocks as a binary file instead of 
as a text file.

Oh well.  There are other approaches I can use (e.g., converting the 
block source into a proper file prior to darcs record, and converting it 
back to a block after darcs get); I was just trying to be lazy.  Thanks.  
:)

--
Samuel A. Falvo II