I'm looking to improve my programming skills by tackling some small projects, and I thought working on file format conversions or generating files could be a fun way to learn. However, I recently realized that file compression is way more complex than I expected. For instance, I used to think PNGs were just large, uncompressed bitmaps, but I learned there's a whole bunch of tricksy encoding methods involved! It feels quite overwhelming right now, so I'm wondering if anyone can recommend some simple file formats that are beginner-friendly for practice.
3 Answers
You might want to explore creating a metadata reader for MP3 files. It doesn't involve much binary data handling, making it a manageable starting point for working with file formats.
For audio, you can't go wrong with AIFF and WAV. They're both uncompressed formats and pretty simple to parse. If images are your jam, check out TIFF, BMP, ICO, and PPM; these formats are easier to handle, too. Just be mindful that TIFF can have optional features like compression, so sticking to the basic uncompressed form is best.
GIFs and BMPs are great options! GIF encoding uses LZW, which is pretty straightforward. Back in 2001, I actually created a script to adjust the HSL of GIFs live across a site. BMPs can be used for projects like barcode generators. If you're interested, some of my old scripts are even on GitHub!
I tried implementing GIF myself during school, and let me tell you, it took me over a month! The concept of LZW isn't too hard, but nailing the complete GIF spec down is really tricky.