Let's develop an open-source media archive standard

From: Dwight K. Elvey <dwight.elvey_at_amd.com>
Date: Wed Aug 11 15:54:29 2004

>From: "Cini, Richard" <RCini_at_congressfinancial.com>
>
>This example represents the block data using metatags...I guess along the
>"XML" part of the thread.
>
>I was thinking similarly to you but not using XML metadata:
>
>;Hardware descriptor
>MFGR
>MACHINE
>SUBTYPE
>DRIVETYPE (this of course defines what follows)
>;for floppy
>DRIVESIZE
>ENCODING
>TRACKS
>SECTORS
>SECTSIZE
>;HexData
>; Each record or group of records contains the related media data. The
>address record would be used for encoding the metadata
>00TTSSHH: (00-track-sector-head)
>
>I looked to Intel Hex (or Motorola) because it had built-in CRC facilities
>and it was human-readable ASCII. The drive and machine description could be
>encoded in special MOT records probably.
>
>XML is more a more "current" technology but I was trying to keep with the
>platform neutrality by sticking to text-only and not assuming the use of any
>other technology like XML.
>
>Rich
>

Hi
 I like the use of OpenBoot like languages better than more natural
languages like XML or such. My primary reason is that the Forth
like languages are one of the few languages that syntax rules are
simple enough that anyone ( with some programming skills ) can
implement an interpreter. Also, the language is rich enough
that one can even include various converters and even things like
directory printout and file extractors inside the archive file it
self ( with minimal overhead ). This is the concept of a postscript
file. The file it self defines how to be printed with only a
few initial primitives that directly correspond to printing.
 Without too much to go on, one could take the actual printout
of a postscript file and the file itself and be able to determine
the general rules for how do decode any postscript file. Kind
of like the rosetta stone concept.
 We are talking about the maximum information in the smallest human
readable form.
Dwight
Received on Wed Aug 11 2004 - 15:54:29 BST