The Interchange File Format (IFF)
Link to info and specs:
www.ibm.com/developerworks/power/library/pa-spec16
Y Iff ?
“One of the most disappointing lessons learned from IFF is simply that a pretty good standard can easily be ignored in favor of a huge variety of proprietary formats. A very large number of formats out there have carefully attempted to recreate just the basic functionality of IFF. In practice, this means that graphics programs are stuck supporting dozens of subtly incompatible formats, each of which has its own innovative set of quirks.”
Link to info and specs:
www.ibm.com/developerworks/power/library/pa-spec16
Y Iff ?
“One of the most disappointing lessons learned from IFF is simply that a pretty good standard can easily be ignored in favor of a huge variety of proprietary formats. A very large number of formats out there have carefully attempted to recreate just the basic functionality of IFF. In practice, this means that graphics programs are stuck supporting dozens of subtly incompatible formats, each of which has its own innovative set of quirks.”
IFF Official Specifications
http://www.fileformat.info/format/iff/spec/7866a9f0e53c42309af667c5da3bd426/index.htm
The chunk idea seems very similar to PNG. And PNG is far more powerful and far more widely used format for pixel graphics. And it's also an open format.
ReplyDelete@unv "far more powerful"? Tell me, pray tell, how do I store formatted text or a font or a spreadsheet or a movie in a PNG file in a way that standard programs can read it as easily as standard programs can read the same data from IFF files?
ReplyDeleteI certainly am glad that both IFF and PNG are open formats.
I certainly strongly support using IFF over creating yet another incompatible file format.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the motions of the RepRap seem to be better described using a vector graphics format than a raster graphics format.
I suspect the World Wide Web Consortium recommended standard vector graphics file format, SVG, might be slightly better than IFF for this particular application.
Wikipedia: SVG