tricks when designing project file formats?

[pir]

What you're saying makes sense about using boost or Qt. Also a good point about wether it is so smart to use an additional library when only using one function from it. One thing is that I find Qt a bit hard to compile because of qmake and it's project files... don't want to dive into that more than I need to right now. Also Boost seems to have a lot of other nice libraries, so I will use more of it later, maybe... plus it seems like it's more available... I could simply install it from my installation disc. But, point taken. Actually thought of that myself.

Sorry about using the format word. As I said before, I'm new to files. I've always felt a bit unconfortable when working with files. What defines a format? Is the expression "file format "equivalent with "file type"?

You have to exuse my slow mind... I still don't get what you're after when talking about defining the structure, or what to call it, of the file instead of making a dump... Ok, by dumping I don't mean push absolutely everything into the saved file... and about the headers you're talking about... what would they contain? The version is included by Boost... have I forgotten something?

sorry about the large body of text, I didn't insert any quotes because I think it would make it worse...
thanks
pir

[wysota]

Sorry about using the format word. As I said before, I'm new to files. I've always felt a bit unconfortable when working with files. What defines a format? Is the expression "file format "equivalent with "file type"?

It's not about the word. All I meant was that a "file format" has to be something more than a plain dump of data structures.

I still don't get what you're after when talking about defining the structure, or what to call it, of the file instead of making a dump... Ok, by dumping I don't mean push absolutely everything into the saved file... and about the headers you're talking about... what would they contain? The version is included by Boost... have I forgotten something?

The header should contain some information about the file type itself, so that its properties can be easily extracted by some external applications and so that the file type can be recognized. Furthermore if you just make a plain dump, you are forcing yourself to change the file format everytime the structure of your data changes. But it is your choice, I don't say it's wrong, I only say you strip yourself from flexibility.

[pir]

Well, it's my choice at present... while I'm trying to get things working... actually I'm thinking about what is needed and what information mustn't be saved. Some stuff would screw up the program if I saved it. So saving the complete state would not be that good.

Thanks, I got some grip of what you're saing.
pir