Defining Disk Image Dump Standard

You like to have a standard for data description in relation to medias ? So, why going for a stone age aproach like fixed numbers and fields ? Why not a tagged format ? And if we talk about a tagged format, XML should be first choice. In fact, some time ago I did think about almost the same idea. I did develop a first draft of an XML based scheme to describe a mainframe storage situation, to run possible emulators from a complex but detailed defined storage setup. This format can be used also to describe data structured of simple micro computer media. At the moment the DTD is only defined for the data structures - I have not started to define meta informations vor formats and hardware (like your soft/hard sectored flag). I'll post the DTD and two sample configurations in a seperate mail. The first one to recognize the Disk Format described in the second example (And names the content) will get 'prefered helper' state during eVCF 2.0 :)) Or something similar... Basicly the structure is defined as: Channel/Device/Media/Head/Track/Block/Data Chanel/Device ma be omited. Instead of Data, Raw may be used to descrive a 'Physical' content (like Nibble data, as needed to store copy protected data). Raw may also exist not only on Block level, but also on Track, Head or Media Level. Data itself may be encoded in different ways, either Binary, or as 'Hex', or in classic (readable) loader formats, to allow easy transmission of these files across system boundries. Please see the DTD for details. Decoding a XML file is not not a big difference to a fixed format, but _way_ more flexible. Gruss H. P.S.: The DTD is named CCDD for ClassicComputerDeviceData -- VCF Europa 2.0 am 28./29. April 2001 in Muenchen http://www.vintage.org/vcfe http://www.homecomputer.de/vcfe