Let's develop an open-source media archive standard

[Steve Thatcher]

XML is platform neutral, ascii and provides a structure to information rather than just an INI file type of dump - the start and end keywords let you define as many sub structures as you need.

best regards, Steve Thatcher

-----Original Message-----
From: Vintage Computer Festival <vcf at siconic.com>
Sent: Aug 11, 2004 3:23 PM
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Subject: RE: Let's develop an open-source media archive standard

On Wed, 11 Aug 2004, Cini, Richard wrote:

> 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.

I like the XML style because it's more explicit; more human-readable.

> 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.

XML is platform neutral because it's basically ASCII, right?

-- 

Sellam Ismail                                        Vintage Computer Festival
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