Date   : Thu, 23 Aug 2001 22:36:52 +0200
From   : Isabel Cisternas & Robert Schmidt <rschmidt@...>
Subject: Re: Online BBC Games database

Richard Gellman wrote:
> My idea for the protocol was a simple way for any frontend or emulator to
> identify a disc image based on its contents.
> The opportunity to offer additional information is at the discretion of the
> emulator/front-end author.

This is attractive, but how do you identify a game based on a disc
image?  For the popular games, there'll be a myriad of different file
combinations, patches, versions, cracks, menu discs and so on.

It brings be to another twist on the XML topic, though: 
If an emulator (or front-end) is URL-oriented in its game oriented file
accesses (with appropriately smart caching), it doesn't matter whether
the XML+game related binary files reside on your local harddisk or any
web server.  The base URL only changes from file:// to http:// (or even
ftp://).  Broadband users could run their emulator (or front-end) with
instant access to all game info and data, without having done a single
manual download!

After this has been made possible, one would like the ability to
synchronize one, some or all entries between the local harddisk and the
remote server.  The users could also opt to keep all XML data locally,
but access all binary data (disc images, scans or docs) remotely, or
even vice versa.

Mark, I think a pretty general XML structure should be sufficient.  All
the data types you mention are user oriented, and they're probably just
as well off using the same tag.  How about an additional optional tag
within doclink:

    <doclink>
       <name> ... </name>
       <url> ... </url>
       {<category>[manual|cover|map|screen|...]</category>}
    </doclink>


Cheers,
Robert