Let's develop an open-source media archive standard

[Vintage Computer Festival]

On Wed, 11 Aug 2004, Fred Cisin wrote:

> > On Wed, 11 Aug 2004, David V. Corbin wrote:
> > > At the minimal the archive would consist of every byte in the stream. Since
> > > there is the potential for loarge areast of "no-data", previous posters
> > > suggested using the intel format which consists of an offset [address] and a
> > > number of data bytes represented in ascii hex characters.
>
> On Wed, 11 Aug 2004, Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
> > Ok, I see now.  This makes absolute sense.  It also somewhat effects a
> > form of implicit compression, which is good.  By explicitly specifying
> > where the data goes on the medium, you could then leave out any sections
> > that are just zeroes.
>
> or E5h?  (fill byte for "no data" on CP/M formatting)
> or F6h?
> rather than "leave out" any sections that are just zeroes,
> put in a tag that says "x 00's", "x E5's", etc.

Well, sure.  But then I went on to imply that this method has problems
(one of which you just pointed out).

Still, it bears consideration.

-- 

Sellam Ismail                                        Vintage Computer Festival
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International Man of Intrigue and Danger                http://www.vintage.org

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