Forms6 Conversion to/from text FMB <=> FMT

I don't know if you have used Forms4.5's conversion to FMT feature or not. The facility would have converted the .FMB
(binary) into .FMT (text).

This was ideal for allowing the source to be read using a simple text editor.

For the past few weeks, we have been converting everything to Developer 6.
Forms 6 also allows conversion to/from text/binary, but for reasons that escape me, Oracle has decided to encrypt all the PL/SQL code within the .FMT using hexadecimal (presumably to stop people from manipulating their FMT manually!).

This makes the whole idea of .FMT useless. This is especially important for us since
1. We want to carry out 'impact analysis' on the ASCII source of our software (i.e., look for patterns in the source like a column name)
2. we use the PVCS version maneger and using the PVCS keywords
(e.g., $Revision $), we automatically track version numbers for
our software.

Does anyone else find this infuriating?
Any ideas / Workarounds?

Thank you in advance.

• Sent from RemarQ http://www.remarq.com The Internet's Discussion Network * The fastest and easiest way to search and participate in Usenet - Free!