Support

Would you guys be willing to disclose the internal file format of the FDM file? If so, I propose building a small Java web app - database driven of course - that would permit uploading FDM files, merging and downloading FDM files against a database of user contributed Macros.

I'd even settle for getting the FDM file format under Non-Disclosure Agreement - if you are willing to let me build the web application to handle contributions and merges. I have a large number of custom Macro's I've built for the tube audio community, and there is a need to manage these as the FPDesigner only has rudimentary support for managing the FDM file.

Let me know! I'd love to do it.

-- Jim Doyle

Hi Jim,

I apologize for the late responding.

Actually I like your idea of such a web database. And certainly I understand that you need the FDM file format for this. It's actually quite simple to parse to a certain point. And to this point no NDA is necessary. ;-)

A fdm file is basically a sqlite database. It's mostly used in C/C++ environments but there are also some Java implementations like SQLJet. I didn't try them but it should be no problem to parse them from Java. For a first look you could use a tool like the SQLite Browser. You will see, that the database structure is not complicated and self explaining. If you have any questions regarding it, please feel free to ask.

And the certain point I was talking about is the field "ObjectData" in the table "Objects". This is a blob field which contains the actual definition of the Macro object in the Front Panel Designer format. To parse this, it's quite complicated and would be a hard to do with Java. But when I understand it right, you don't need to. Correct?

Best regards,
Kai Schaeffer