Re: file format quest

Brian Smithson (brian@eit.COM)
Thu, 25 Jan 1996 10:12:47 -0700

On Jan 24, 11:19am, Bob Bottomley wrote:
> Subject: RE: file format quest
> The response from Palm in the past was that the formats are
> proprietary and if you sign the proper nondisclosure agreement, they
> may let you have the information.
>
> I thought such attitudes were a thing of the past; they should do
> everything possible to foster the platform. But that has always been
> the Tandy way.

A couple of things about this:

(1) Tandy and Palm have no particular relationship. When Palm wrote the
Zoomer apps, they were a very small start-up company, and they're now
part of US Robotics.

(2) Palm didn't want to release details of their file formats because to
do so would imply that they need to continue to use and support those
formats. They would only release details to companies that wanted to
develop Zoomer apps which worked with the Palm apps. Intellilink is
an example of a company that made use of Palm's file formats. All things
considered, I think that's a reasonable decision to have made.

Still, I can understand (from experience) that it's a real pain to have
put a lot of personal data into applications which have proprietary file
formats. I wish that Palm had included an "export" function in their
apps so that one could more easily get at the data. Your best bet in
that regard might be to use a product like Intellilink to convert the
Palm application data to something standard like comma-delimited format.

-- 
Brian Smithson                                       brian@eit.com
Enterprise Integration Technologies                  (415)617-8009
800 El Camino Real                               FAX (415)462-6369
Menlo Park, CA 94025 USA                       http://www.eit.com/
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