Re: New Text Format Discussion

On Thu, 21 Jul 2005 12:59:00 -0400, Wolfgang Keller <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> I had a look at the new format file.
>

Hi Wolfgang,

>
> format-v2.txt>  Timestamps will be stored in GMT.
> Comment: This is not wrong but it is worth noting that "epoch" time  
> values are per se universal and have never anything to do with locale  
> specific time-zones.
>

You may be right, depending on how you define "epoch." I guess the "GMT"
clarifies that the value 0 refers to midnight, jan 1, 1970, GMT, and not
to midnight, jan 1, 1970, in your local timezone.

>
> MAIN TOPIC: TEXT FORMAT IN UTF-8
>
> Interesting that the new text format is not yet implemented. This gives  
> perhaps a chance for reconsideration.
>

It's implemented in Password Gorilla.

>
> It came to my mind that there might be a way to make any ugly user  
> option superfluous. If you dublicate all text formated field types (5 by  
> number) and create new types for Unicode text you could have parallel  
> editions of old and new formats in one file. The only negative  
> consequence is that records modified in new version cannot be read in  
> old program versions (fields will render blank in this case).
>

Exactly. If a user modified a database using a new version, then it would
be unreadable using an old version of Password Safe.

With the "IsUTF8" database option, an old version of Password Safe can
read the database just fine, and, ignoring the option that it does not
know about, everything shows up fine but for non-ASCII characters, which
will show up as "garbage."

Of course, with your solution, the software could use the old field only
if it detected that the data was ASCII only.

>
> Upon writing, algorithms prefer 0x14, and if detecting 0x4 erase it. In  
> consequence this allows a "smooth" migration into the new format without  
> the user even noticing it.
>

With the option, a similar migration is possible, as a new version could
default to enabling the option -- maybe only if it detects non-ASCII
characters anywhere.

>
> Perhaps it's worth a thought!
>

The two alternatives seem reasonably equivalent to me.

Frank

-- 
Frank Pilhofer, [email protected]


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