Let's develop an open-source media archive standard

From: Vintage Computer Festival <vcf_at_siconic.com>
Date: Wed Aug 11 13:32:00 2004

On Wed, 11 Aug 2004, Roger Merchberger wrote:

> Different systems interpret binary data differently, especially if there is
> human-readable code within the file. MS-DOS very likely could think the
> file is binary, and the first hex 0x06 would terminate the file. However,
> if it is considered binary many viewers wouldn't open it if it's got
> non-printable ASCII characters within.
>
> Or -- how about transferring this file from MS-DOS <=> Linux <=> MacOS <=>
> BeOS ... will it (and if so, how will it) convert line ending chars, tabs &
> other binary chars? A hex representation will reduce conversion problems
> measurably - remember, this is supposed to be an "ultra-portable" format.

All very good points, which is why binary data should not be included.

> If we're already going to take this "beyond" the spec, couldn't we
> institute some RLE encoding as well?

The spec will definitely benefit from some sort of compression feature
that can be implemented using tags, as was described previously.

-- 
Sellam Ismail                                        Vintage Computer Festival
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Received on Wed Aug 11 2004 - 13:32:00 BST

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