[GreenKeys] RTTY Art JAVA Viewer Facelift

[Tom Jennings]

On Wed, 19 Jan 2005, Bob Camp wrote:

> If we take five level code and save it as eight level code then we have an 
> extra three bits to fill up.
>
> If we set them to all zeros then that's fine, but it eliminates handling the 
> file as anything other than a binary file. That's ok but if it's binary then 
> you don't get any comments or added notes.

Another way that sounds silly but would eliminate the ambiguity would
be to make a more literal representation of the hole pattern. I know about
character code translations but sometimes the brutal is the way to go:




# This tape was labeled "SNOOPY XMAS 1 Jan 1970"
.....
.....
.....
.....
.....
.....
.....
X...X
XX..X
..X.X




It's 5X (or 8X) larger than a simple character transfer but
eliminates all ambiguity, and really, how many characters is even
a 6" roll of paper tape anyways?

Assuming that the left-most bit is most-significant, it would
handle tapes of any width with no additional knowledge.

Ignoring blank lines, and lines beginning with "#" would let you
comment it, print it, etc. Lines terminated with CR, LF, or CR/LF
would be simply the usual text translation problem, and even
bad translations non-harmful.

All that's left is to choose a character for NO-HOLE and HOLE.
1/0, ./X, whatever.


There's a time for elegance, and there's time for a 2x4 up 'side
the head :-)

tomj