What is the Runestone Project
Project Runestone has been formed as an ambitious project to reengineer the way information is stored in the computers of tomorrow. The result will be a file format/stream protocol designed for simplicity, flexibility and performance.
The project seeks to go back to basics. To go back to the time before most of todays formats were invented, and see what could have been done instead. Armed with the knowledge of the needs of today, and a sensible guess of the needs for the coming years, we will be able to produce a format that fulfill the needs of tomorrows information society. The format will be designed to be robust and durable, much like the ancient nordic writings it is named after.
However, unlike the runestones themselves, the project seeks to construct a format that is lightwheight and fast. Fast for the programmer to implement, fast for the processing unit to work with (be it a Desktop Computer or a PDA), and fast for the blissfully unaware end consumer to use.
Why the Runestone Project?
Have you ever:
- Wanted a fast serializable file format that retains information in an efficient, precise and simple manner?
- Had problems with character encoding, ending up with your native language beeing garbled?
- Encountered an almost impossible merge in your revision control system, since someone happened to commit a change to the line endianess on all lines?
- Wondered why people in your project never ever can adhere to (your) sensible indentation and spacing?
- Figured it must be unnessecary demanding to gzip and xml-parse Scalable Vector Graphics?
- Needed a format for configuration files, that is both editable programatically and by hand, without messing up formatting?
- Wanted to be able to insert images and other non-textual objects directly into the HTML, without external referencing?
If one or more of the above applies to you, then you'll most likely be interested in The Runestone Project