Suggestion for addition to SCP file format

[mark_k]

Hi,

A suggestion for an addition to the .scp file format: Add a field for an arbitrary comment. You could put that directly after the current last field (timestamp).

My use for that would be to record the drive make/model/serial number used for reading the disk. And maybe some notes about that specific disk (e.g. when/where bought from, whether known to be modified, etc.).

Or perhaps have a general extensible extra data system to allow programs to handle extra data even if they don't understand that specific entry. So you could have a field type followed by byte length then the field data (the comment text in this case). Hmm, that sounds a bit like the IFF specification...


Also a little question about the timestamp field. Is the time supposed to be UTC or the user's local time? And what zero-padding is supposed to be used? In scp_image_specs.txt one example given is "1/05/2014 5:15:21 PM"

I assume the date format is the American type, i.e. day/month/year? Is the day supposed to be not-zero-padded (for days 1-9) but the month field is?

(If I were (re)designing the format, I'd probably have the time field contain a string conforming to ISO 9601...)

[admin]

The time stamp comes from the PC's current setting, as seen from Visual Basic's date command.

Adding an extension to the end of the .scp image would break every single program that supports the .scp image file format. That would be hundreds of thousands of disk images that would not work any more. I deliberately did not include a comments field so that a separate file would be used for that to prevent any type of comment editing corrupting the image data (and more importantly the checksum of the entire file).