Donations etc:
I have had the standpoint that if I am getting paid, then it is "normal" contractor hourly rate. I am open to sponsoring in the sense that I am getting paid for a certain well-defined task. I have not been very keen on what Lyndel pretty accurately calls "bones".

However, I may reconsider...

Support of foreign formats:
Let me explain a bit on the present formats: First there was the "Pronto Classic". There is an underrated program/library called Tonto, by Stewart Allen. This contains a complete API for both reading, creating, and writing of .ccf files. Thus, IrScrutinizer supports import and export of Pronto Classic files, to my knowledge essentially perfectly. So that was easy, again thanx to Stewart Allen.

Then the Pronto Professional, .xcf files: These are nothing but a zip archive, consisting of a number of image files, and one XML file. This XML file is quite easy to make sense of, and read information from, IR signals are in general stored as Pronto Hex, with some signals being encrypted. I have not tried to break this encryption, main reason is that I am not aware of any major collection of such files. (Also, IIRC, ProntoEdit, freely available here, is supposed to be able to read it and transform it to ordinary Pronto Hex.) For writing, this is a bit more problematic, since I have no official documentation, there may be some reason why just constructing an XML Schema/DTD and and creating valid XML instances wrt that Schema/DTD. So IrScrutinizer supports only import, not export of xcf files. Simply not worth it to try to get export fo work. Another problem is that there is (at least) two different versions around (given as the attribute "Version" in the root element", see file XcfImporter, lines 154ff).
But I think that the importer is at least almost complete.

The ProntoNG format, .pcf, is different. It is also a ZIP file with bitmaps + XML, but (IIRC) also the XML file is encrypted.

The IrTrans format is officially documented on IrTrans' website, but the documentation has many deficiencies. So the IrTrans importer/exporter is a mix between official docu and guesswork.

The CML format is binary and fairly complicated; fortunately John Fine once wrote a program for reading such files, used for the importer.

The export format irplus, for the Android app with the same name, was written with support from the app's author, so it should be pretty reliable. It is straightforward XML anyhow.

The export format AnyMote, for the Android app with the same name, is slighty differerent. To my knowledge, no documentation of the format exists, and I have not been in contact with the authors. Just reverse engineering... But it is a rather simple XML file, so the exporter works, at least I am not aware of any case when it does not.

So that should give you an idea of what's involved.

So why not just upload the sample file, for example to the file area, as PM or mail. And it can never hurt to mail the program authors and ask for documentation... Also, please address


Note that, with sufficient effort, I may be able to cook up a Harmony exporter [Link: github.com] It would potentially have many users. However, not many seem to care...