![]() Although the AmigaOS development team publishes FORMs and chunks online developers should not rely on this method to distribute their IFF type specification. Once you have registered your FORM or chunk with the AmigaOS development team, you should release the specifications of the chunk to the developer community. Distribute final specifications to the developer community. You should register your FORM and chunk names before finalizing your product and its documentation in case there is a name conflict with an existing IFF type. This is the only way to prevent name conflicts in IFF files. Note that even you don't plan to release the specifications of your FORM or chunk, you must still register the name with the AmigaOS development team. For an example of chunk descriptions, examine the 8SVX FORM's SEQN and FADE chunks. For an excellent example of a third party FORM specification, see the WORD FORM. Now ANIM is the de facto standard for animation files. For example, the ANIM form came from third party developers who proposed and refined the format. Also, if you register your new IFF type, it is more likely that it will be adopted as an IFF standard that other applications will use. By submitting your proposals for FORM or chunk types to Amigan Software, you help prevent duplication of an existing data type. The AmigaOS development team acts as a "dictionary" of IFF types. To avoid the problem of incompatible IFF types, register your new IFF types with the AmigaOS development team. Confusion results when programs try to read FORMs or chunks whose meaning was altered by a non-conforming program. Further, deciding to use a pre-existing FORM or chunk in a new and different way is a lot like making up your own meaning for a pre-existing word. You may understand what the word means, but when you try to use your new word to communicate with others, they won't understand you. It's like making up a new word for something that everyone sees every day. If every application used a different IFF FORM, one application would be unable to share data with another because it can't read the other application's IFF FORM. Just about anyone can follow the IFF guidelines and define their own FORM or chunk. Coming up with a new kind of IFF FORM or chunk is easy-almost too easy. Submit specifications to the AmigaOS development team. This will help to prove that the idea is sound and can be implemented in software before others try to use it. Before settling on a format, set up prototype code to test the proposed format. Implement the new type and conduct feasibility tests. This step helps to ensure that a proposed IFF form or chunk type is flexible and isn't redundant. Users are not forced to use one product or another, but can buy as many as they need to get the job done, fully utilizing all the features that each product has to offer. When more than one product uses the same IFF type, the market widens for all products that use that IFF type. The most important thing about designing IFF FORMs and chunks is that they meet the data storage and transfer needs of multiple applications. When developing a new IFF type, there are several steps you should follow:ĭiscuss needs and specifications within the developer community and with the AmigaOS development team. To satisfy these growing needs, developers will continue to define Since its introduction as an open standard in 1985, IFF has widened toĮncompass data of many sorts-and the need for new IFF types continues to The need for "conversion" software, because most Amiga applications can That is a chore on other platforms, simply because the format of the imageįile may be different from one application to the next. The Amiga's ability to render an image, touch it up, convert it to aĭifferent display mode, and load it into in another package is something The wealth of standard IFF FORMs and chunks gives the Amiga userĭata-sharing capabilities that are virtually unequaled on other systems. IFF has been one of the keys to the Amiga's superiority in multimediaĪpplications, allowing interchange of media elements between packages. Please make all submissions via the AmigaOS web site contact form. New chunks and FORMS should be registered with the AmigaOS development team. At the end of this section are additional documents describing how the ILBM FORM type works on the Amiga. This list is often referred to as the 3rd party registry since these are FORM and Chunk types created by application developers and not part of the original IFF specification.įor all FORM and Chunk types that are public, the official specifications from the third party company are listed (in alphabetical order). This section contains the official list of registered FORM and Chunk names that are reserved and in use.
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