if you could pick a standard format for a purpose what would it be and why?
e.g. flac for lossless audio because…
(yes you can add new categories)
summary:
- photos .jxl
- open domain image data .exr
- videos .av1
- lossless audio .flac
- lossy audio .opus
- subtitles srt/ass
- fonts .otf
- container mkv (doesnt contain .jxl)
- plain text utf-8 (many also say markup but disagree on the implementation)
- documents .odt
- archive files (this one is causing a bloodbath so i picked randomly) .tar.zst
- configuration files toml
- typesetting typst
- interchange format .ora
- models .gltf / .glb
- daw session files .dawproject
- otdr measurement results .xml
SQLite for all “I’m going to write my own binary format because I is haxor” jobs.
There are some specific cases where SQLite isn’t appropriate (streaming). But broadly it fits in 99% of cases.
To chase this - converting to json or another standardized format in every single case where someone is tempted to write their own custom parser. Never write custom parsers kids, they’re an absolutely horrible time-suck and you’ll be fixing them quite literally forever as you discover new and interesting ways for your input data to break them.
Edit: it doesn’t have to be json, I really don’t care what format you use, just pick an existing data format that uses a robust, thoroughly tested, parser.
To add to that. Configuration file formats…just pick a standard one, do not write your own.
And while we are at it, if there is even a remote chance that you have a “we will do everything declaratively” idea, just use an existing programming language for your file format instead of painfully growing some home-grown add-ons to your declarative format over the next decade or two because you were wrong about only needing a declarative format.
Also parquet if the data aren’t mutated much.
give me a category please
I’ll take “what’s that file format for $300 please”
Yeah, what was it? If office formats used sqlite instead of zip?