Binary transput comments please

[chris hermansen]

Reading Lindsey's comments in AB42.4.4 I find myself a bit confused.  In §7
Binary transput he writes:

If the book has random access, then the only way a user can find the
location of his data, for subsequent use of "set", is for him to enquire
about the "page number", "line number" and "char number" before he outputs
it.  The procedures "space", "newline" and "newpage" may on occasions be
useful for aligning data in convenient positions, but the fact that they
work at all for binary transput is probably more due to the fact that they
exist, than that they are useful.  This is probably why they are not
available for use with "put bin", "get bin", etc.

I'm struggling to understand how "space" etc could work for binary transput
but not be available for use with "put bin" etc.

Does anyone have any thoughts  about  that?

And one other puzzle - should we continue to think of Book as having a
character row at its heart, given the need to support binary and character
moods through the same mode?  Might it not be better to think of Book as
treating with bytes and then either Channel or more probably File dealing
with character <-> byte conversions?

Thanks in advance!


-- 
Chris Hermansen · clhermansen "at" gmail "dot" com

C'est ma façon de parler.
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