CompuServe Messages

I think it's simple – when you make a datatype, you are saying "here" to everyone. So, your motivation needs to be other than the datatype itself. I'm not one to particularly feel that file formats are something that _should_ be a valuable commodity – It has become that way because there are too many, and there wasn't anything LIKE datatypes around. I'd just as soon see it end; I'd be perfectly happy to remove all file loading from Imagemaster and depend on system resources – we can spend our time more productively working on high level functions than we can on file formats (blech!). That's how *I* feel about it; so odds are, we'll do datatypes if it's practical to do so (it won't be, while it's a 3.0 feature and 3.0 is isolated to the 4000). Others may feel differently; for me, all the time we spent on file formats was pretty much forced on us – we'd be just as happy to get out of it. Imagemaster is the best image manipulation program out there; I believe we can keep it that way, even if all programs could load formats equally. You have to look beyond the obvious here – the synergy of "all programs" being able to load "all formats" and save 'em too, is more powerful and useful than anything we, or you, could present. That's worth a sacrifice, because anytime the marketplace, the Amiga community, powers-up in a *really* significant way, the vast majority of developers will benefit as we get to service that more powerful, more sophisticated community. –Ben …via AutoPilot