[news.software.notes] sharing notes among machines with different binary representations

lacroix@prlb29.prlb.philips.be (lacroix) (12/12/89)

Has anyone upgraded the notesfile system so as to have the SAME
notesfiles accessible BOTH on Sun 3 and 4 machines?   

Alignment problems make this does not work with the version of notes
(rev. 1.7) we are using.  Has anyone looked into the problem?  What are
the promising approaches?  For example, what about using XDR?

Michel Lacroix

npm@telesoft.com (Nancy Milligan @eldest) (12/19/89)

In article <7@prlb29.prlb.philips.be>, lacroix@prlb29.prlb.philips.be (lacroix) writes:
> Has anyone upgraded the notesfile system so as to have the SAME
> notesfiles accessible BOTH on Sun 3 and 4 machines?   
> [...] 

Yes.  I'm working on this problem now.  We aren't using XDR or anything
terribly slick but are taking care of alignment by writing out each 
structure member one at a time and taking care of byte ordering on the
fly.  I'm also including code to handle machines with 2 byte words, like 
the PC, as well as 4 byte.  I plan to have a 368i, Decstation, sun2 and 
sun4 all sharing the same note files.

I don't have much time to spend on it so I don't plan on having it 
available for another month or two.  If you're interested in the source
just drop me a line and I'll arrange to get it to you after I've finished.

-- 
telesoft!npm@ucsd.edu
Nancy P. Milligan