Let's develop an open-source media archive standard

[Dwight K. Elvey]

>From: "Vintage Computer Festival" <vcf at siconic.com>
---snip---
>>
>> 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.
>

Hi
 Using the Postscript like concept, one would have a compactor
word defined earlier in the file such that simple syntax like:

 EXPAND 512 E5  would be able to create a block of 512 E5's

 Of course one might want to keep a consistant radix like:
 
 EXPAND 200 E5 
 
 But that is not neccessary if the word EXPAND was first defined
as such.
 Also such things as copy protection where a sector size has
been changed on a track might be encoded as:

 SECTOR_SIZE 512 SECTOR_DATA 0 xxx..xxx SECTOR_SIZE 256
 SECTOR_DATA 1 xx....xxx etc.
 
 The Archive file could include a simple glossary of the externally
defined words that are in common use while still being internally
extended to cover special cases.
Dwight