Oristano, April 2004

Hi
I'm Italian – Sardinia Ooo End User (44 years old).

I have a bad problem converting procedure writed in ms basic to procedure 
written in OOo basic.

OOO Basic read and write from disk IEEE format. 

There are a lot of data file writed in Microsoft Basic with Microsft binary 
format (MBF).

Problem is reading and writing file that contains single and double precision 
number

What do you think about write and include in OOO native function a function for 
convert single and double precision Microsoft binary format??
I'm converting a lot of MS basic program in OOO basic, but this format for me 
is a very hard strong barrier.

Format of single and double precision in Microsoft binary format (MBF)is 
different from IEEE single and double precision format.

Differences between MBF and IEEE format
Byte and bits order is reversed on then disk 
Sign bit is not a the end but is between mantissa bits and exponent bits
( Bill  love international standards like smoke in the eyes...)

thanks 
Giorgio Demontis

Now i explain with a file, pippo.ter. I cannot read the double precision number.

This is the hex dump of file pippo.ter

Pippo.ter contains two record 30 byte each long

First record is header,  first number (2 byte integer) contains number of 
records in the file

second record is data record. 

Data record structure

First data field is a negative integer number corresponding to the record number

	Second field is a description

		Third field is a double precision number

		Fourth fieLd is a double precision number

2 byte is filler

Header 							 	Contents
 01 00 01 00 20 20 20 20-20 20 20 20 B2 DB 19 ED	 1 1, other not 
interesting
 AC 0F 4F C3 1B 11 F7 C2-F6 87 1E EF 1A EF 

 First data record 
 FF FF 70 74 30 30 30 30 30 30-30 31 00 00 00 00 	-1 pt000001 1.0 1.0
 00 00 00 81 00 00 00 00 00 00-00 81  00 00 


(1.0 double precision IEEE, writed with OOo, like 00 00 00 00 00 00 F0 3F)

Thanks 
Giorgio Demontis