“EA IFF 85” Standard for Interchange Format Files (1985)

IFF is still relevant even now if you want a really straightforward binary blob package. There's almost nothing to it for basic parsing - just watch out for the byte alignment padding and endianness, and default to loading chunks by name, not order.

(On that note, a lot of software that works with IFF/AIFF/RIFF will "do it wrong" and expect a particular chunk order for the data it works with, which over the years has led to a lot of "fix-up" software for cranky programs needing massaged data.)

It often slips my mind that Electronic Arts was once one of the premier Amiga software publishers, specifically developing Deluxe Paint. It's weird to think of any of the old Amiga-related companies surviving and thriving decades later, because most didn't. The ones who have succeeded the most have long since lost any resemblance to the original company; EA is one of those.

I remember studying IFF, and specifically the AIFF audio format, for some software ideas I had back in the late 80s or early 90s, but never actually made into something useful. AIFF, in an extended form, is still used in Apple audio products (like GarageBand and Logic). So, IFF is still around, to some extent.

IFF is a very well-designed format. While it is not directly used anymore, variations on it still do: RIFF, which is little endian as opposed to IFF which is big endian, lives on in WAVs, AVIs, and other formats. AIFF, an Apple audio format; Even PNG and Apple's QuickTime container format (commonly known as MP4 these days) were inspired by IFF. [0]

Using FourCCs[1], which seem trivial and intuitive these days, was essentially introduced in IFF - back in 1985 when it was, the prevailing encoding was "just enumerate them in a table written on a napkin somewhere".

IFF was the prototype for future-proof binary tag-length-value formats.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interchange_File_Format

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FourCC

EA continued through 2000+ to use a file format that had its roots in IFF, though a bit more advanced.

Impressive how it almost starts as a CS course. Complete with A.Kay quote.

It always surprised me a little IFF was not more popular in the PC world.

Date: 1985...perhaps redundant.

These days, you will mostly just use filesystem full of files in standard formats.