Let's develop an open-source media archive standard

[Fred Cisin]

On Wed, 11 Aug 2004, Ethan Dicks wrote:
> . . . You could end up with files that could
> never fit on the medium they describe,
> . . .
> One suggestion... for the data portion of sectors/tracks/etc... let's spec
> in a run-length encoding scheme so large portions of unused media compress
> down really tightly (lots of zeros, or in the case of a real 1541 disc,
> lots of hex 0x01s).  If it's XMLish, it could look like '<r="256">01</r>'
> or some such.

Initially, I was uncomfortable about the added complications
involved in compression.  But,... the ability to store an image on
the same kind of media that it was created from is a MAJOR bonus.
Consider that there are some machines for which their basic
floppy media is the ONLY practical way [short of Dyna-Typer] to
get data or disk images into them.  Therefore, an important
extension to consider would be any form of lossless compression.
LZW would be good for the entire image file, but not well
suited for compression in individual blocks.