On 4/27/08, Donal K. Fellows <donal.k.fellows@[...].uk>  wrote:
>  Alexandre Ferrieux wrote:
>  > Do all these formats have a 'magic number', or another unambiguous
>  > criterion to decide their nature ?
>  >
> 
>  The photo image loader system is coded with exactly that assumption. It
>  seems to work in practice. :-)

Yes, but if suddenly you allow for transparent handling of the base64
version of all existing formats, you suddenly double that crowd,  and
moreover with printable characters all over the place, while some
magic numbers also have a tendency to be printable. Recipe for
hard-to-debug disaster, for little incentive nowadays.

Again, I see the benefit of allowing base64-encoded images of all
kinds. Simply, I really can't see the use of auto-detecting them.
Today the programmer knows what material he is handling, and in the
rare case where he doesn't, it is trivial to write a try-all iterator
in Tcl.

-Alex

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