Data Translations - What Fileformat?

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Data Translations - What Fileformat?

Any time an application has a Save As... option, you have the option to translate the data format of the current file into another format. This can typically be shown with an imaging program (that lets you save TIFFs as PNG or JPG) or a text editor (that lets you save RTFs as TXT).

In other operating systems, the code that handles this kind of translation has to be built into each application, which means that the programs become bigger, and if the file format isn't supported in the program, then you are out of luck!

In Zeta, things are as told quite different. All supported file formats are called Translators and placed in two central locations in the operating system:

/boot/beos/system/add-ons/Translators
/boot/home/config/add-ons/Translators

The first location should be kept for the default Translators provided in Zeta. If you want to add some Translators your self, then these should be placed in the second location.

Some Translators have their own small Preferences. For example, the JPG file format always gives you the option to specify the degree of compression of the images stored in the file format.

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