Binary transput comments please

[Jose E. Marchesi]

Hi Chris.

Just a heads up that I am not ignoring your emails.  I'm just very busy
at this point and need to look at them carefully.

Thanks for working on that! :)


> 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!