formatsessa

Formatsessa is a fictional open standard devised to describe digital file formats, their encoding, containers, and the metadata that accompanies them. The specification is designed to be machine readable while remaining comprehensible to humans, with the aim of aiding interoperability and comparison across formats.

Origin and scope: The term formatsessa emerged in technical discussions within a hypothetical standards community in the early 2020s. It is presented here as a conceptual model rather than a deployed specification; its goal is to explore how a universal descriptor might help assess compatibility between formats and tools.

Core concepts: A formatsessa description consists of a set of descriptors for individual formats, a dependency/compatibility graph, and a capability table. Each format entry includes fields for identifier, version, containers, codecs, metadata schemes, and security considerations. Relationships can be of types such as 'requires', 'is_compatible_with', or 'extends'. The schema supports profiles to describe use cases and a mechanism for extensions to accommodate domain-specific needs.

Implementation and use: As a hypothetical model, formatsessa is used in theoretical analyses, educational exercises, and discussions about metadata portability and interformat conversion. Some imagined implementations propose validators, example repositories, and reference serializers that map real-world formats to formatsessa entries.

Reception: Formatsessa has not become a widely adopted standard in practice; it serves mainly as a thought experiment illustrating challenges in describing and comparing formats. It is sometimes cited in debates about standardization, extensibility, and the balance between expressiveness and simplicity.