From 46e141aca565a15f103bb2b0b04e7c1b66b7d9ad Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Charles Iliya Krempeaux Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2024 08:42:22 -0800 Subject: [PATCH] initial commits --- README.md | 23 +++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 23 insertions(+) diff --git a/README.md b/README.md index fd9a524..f080bf0 100644 --- a/README.md +++ b/README.md @@ -8,6 +8,29 @@ The **zarf format** is similar to other **archive formats**, such as the **ar f In fact, one of the main points of the **zarf format** existing, is that it was designed to be easy to understand and implement for programmers. The **zarf format** is meant to be both programmer-legible and programmer-friendly. +## Motivation + +There are many many use-cases where multiple files are combined into a single file. +For example: + +* backups, +* eBooks, +* file-systems, +* image galleries, +* journals, +* music albums, +* photo albums, +* software packages, +* website archives, +* _etc_. + +Many of these use-cases either use the **cpio format**, the **rar format**, **tar forat**, or the **zip format**. + +While all of these formats work acceptably as an **archive format** and a **container format** — none of them are **easy** for a programmer of 3 to 10 years of experience to implement a encoder and a decoder for it. +Also none of these supports a ‘**view-source**’ learning style (as none of them is text based, for some definition of "text"). + +That is why the **zarf format** exists. + ## Extension Although **zarf** does _not_ require an extension (since it has magic-bytes), if a file-extension is used for a **zarf** file, it should use the `.zarf` extension (on systems where file-extensions are necessary).