Ann,

>Another way to do that would have been to write a simple filter that
>sits between text and a new type called "crlf", for example. The filter
>would read segments and add line terminators if it didn't find them.

I would love to write a simple little filter in Delphi. Would you kindly
point me in the write direction to learn the ropes on this, even if in C?

I could become the resident "filter" expert... <g>

The one requirement I would have before I got too far into stuff like this
is to demand that we finally come up with some standards on what sub-types
mean what content.

So far we have 1 - Text and 0 - Binary and the other system ones like BLR,
etc.

How about some for JPG, BMP, RTF, XML, HTML, WAV, MP3, MIDI, etc.

And, for those general types, let's determine a standard header that will
determine the "flavor" of file contained if the type doesn't inherantly
specify it's own flavor.

This way it would be possible to do a lot of stuff at the client-side in the
way of generic tools if these standards were enforced. For quite a long time
now I've been trying to get InterBase to do this and also to make a
demonstration available that would show off these capabilities.

FWIW,
Jason Wharton
InterBase Developer Initiative
jwharton@...

InterBase will be the database of the new millennium.