This is not an idea, but a publication of a new reader format: (Borland) Paradox. Hope it may come in handy for someone.
It's (still) not possible to upload custom formats based on Python to FME Hub, so here's my take on how to publish it.
Attached is a ZIP with all the necessary files. All files are stored with paths relative to the FME_HOME of your installation, so they should be unzipped with that in mind.
The reader uses the "pypxlib" library for handling the Paradox tables, and ought to handle all parameter types. However, my test data set is limited, so please report any problems with other data sets to me.
Although there are template files included to support both writing and geometry handling, it's sofar just a pure alphanumeric reader. But with FME it's easy to generate geometry using embedded coordinates. Maybe writing and geometries will be added in the future.
It supports a single parameter, the code page of the DB file. It defaults to "cp1252", i.e. Windows Latin1/ANSI. Please refer to available Python docs on code pages if cp1252 doesn't work for you.
