Re: [geomview-users] geomview binary format?

[Steve M. R. <ste...@vi...>]

On Sun, Nov 04, 2001 at 10:01:19PM +0000, Lloyd Wood wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> What do you recommend as a valid compiler test to see if Geomview
> binary format can be used directly with internal formats or not?

By "internal formats", you mean the processor-native integer and
floating point formats?  Test for endianness: geomview "binary format"
is defined as big endian.  IEEE format is used for I/O of floating
point numbers, so for completeness you'd also need to ensure the
system uses IEEE floating point though I don't expect there are many
non-IEEE machines about these days.


> but the ifdef'd optional binary-format-generating code surprisingly
> does not get run on my Red Hat 7 PIII unless I force selection with:
> #define USE_GV_BINARY_FORMATS
> ...at which point that code is compiled in and subsequently works
> fine.

That's a bit odd: intel is little endian, so you shouldn't be
able to use native format on that platform.


> I'm using red hat's gcc/egcs 2.96 variant and Geomview 1.8.1,
> which I gather from the revision history fixed binary format handling
> on linux - so perhaps avoiding using binary format completely is a
> Good Thing as far as any installed Geomview base is concerned?

I tend to agree; I use text files unless they are really huge.  For
one thing, there is a problem with some versions of geomview on
little-endian machines.  For another, it is much easier for humans to
read input files if they are not binary. ;-)

-S

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