Documentation: Used Conventions

This document is part of the eXtensible Binary Universal Protocol project documentation. It contains description of the auxiliary conventions created for the needs of the project.

Good choice of name may affect public acceptance of the protocol, it might drive it to the success, as well to destruction. It is also appropriate to avoid conflict with existing Internet projects. Selected name should also correspond to a file extension. Although the file type is rather intended as internal code suffix has yet to affect a quick overview and a better read for humans.

In the meantime, the two character extension prefix was elected to distinguish files.

Considered project names (format name, some possible extensions):

• Extensible Binary Format (XB, EB, X2, E2)
• Extensible Binary Free Format
• Extensible Binary Universal Format
• Extensible Binary Universal Protocol
• Extensible File Format (XF, XO, XI)
• Bit Extend Format (BF, BE, BX, 2E, 2X, 2F)
• Binary Universal Format (BU, 2U, UF, UN)
• Universal Free Format
• Free File Format (3F, FF, FR)

Two characters of the designated name will be followed by some of the extensions, which will reflect what is the type of document.

Examples of possible suffixes (extension type):

• Picture P
  • Bitmap Picture PB
  • Multisize Picture PM
  • Vector Picture PV
• Animation A
  • Bitmap Animation AB
  • Multisize Animation AM
  • Vector Animation AV
• Sound S
  • Audio Sound SA
  • Modulable Sound SM
  • Sound Stream SS
• Video V
  • Video Stream VS
• Text T
  • Text Document TD
• Executable E

In case of the real use of the format XBUP it will be necessary to consider the designation as well as other standards, such as MIME, for example, say “something/x-xb- *” and others. The protocol itself is still quite outside of any the standardized methods, and if it will be ever fully deployed, it would most likely replace most of the current formats. (In fact, I consider recognizing the type of data with extensions for obsolete thing and the extension of the project more or less serve only as an aid to people for a resolution of the contents of files)

At this point it would be appropriate to mention that many of the technical terms can be used incorrectly in many parts of this documentation, or at least inappropriately.

This is mainly about an incorrectly used foreign words or incorrectly translated terms. These mistakes should be hopefully removed step by step. Examples of such terms:

Basic block (called “system block” previously) - This is the name for group of blocks, which implementation hould be included into every application which claims to support XBUP protocol.

Document specification - List of block which are defining allowed borders of document blocks.

In the sample applications there are used some amount of non-standard files breaking theirs specification. So far no block group construction concept or it's categorization based on meaning was defined.

So far, there are only basic parts of catalog, therefore realization of additional structures, like descriptions in multiple languages or links to other blocks are still in development or not yet defined.