[ic] Is omitting explicit MySQL column definitions bad?

[Interchange User]

Hi list,

IC 4.9.7, MySQL 4.1, Mac OS 10.2

What happens if you do not explicitly include column definitions for 
MySQL tables accessed in catalog.cfg?  I have a table that was created 
in MySQL, which I later decided to access with Interchange.

Twice, over the course of the past month, my table's datatypes have 
spontaneously changed from whatever they were (date, int, blob) to 
varchar(256) or varchar(16).  The data remained as it was in the 
database, however several fields were truncated down to 256 characters 
when their types changed from TEXT or BLOB to varchar(256).

The only thing I can attribute this to is my editing the table's 
contents using the admin UI, and using the UI to change the 
presentation of the columns (changing the default textbox to textarea 
or dropdowns, for example).

Any idea what could trigger this redefinition of my column types?  It's 
quite disconcerting to see my data being truncated/redefined without 
any reason (that I can figure out, anyway).  I thought I only had to 
add explicit column typedefs in catalog.cfg for tables that were 
created using Interchange.  Was I wrong?

Thank you,

Peter