Let's develop an open-source media archive standard

The format should be extendable!. We can't possibly think of everything now, so it's essential that more stuff can be added later. Another useful thing would be to handle devices that are regarded as just a linear array of blocks (in other words with no explicit tracks and sectors). Also, to be able to note things like file marks, etc so that magtapes can be archived in the same type of file. Agreed. And to go along with that, there should be no assumption about big/little endian machines, word size, or even what character set is used (I think we're agreed that only printable characters, newlines, and not much else should be used). I think others have said this, but the binary data in a sector/block should be recorded in some hex format. Yes, this wastes space in the archive, but it makes it human readable. And if you want to save space on the machine you're storign the archives on, you can always gzip them or whatever. -tony