> The level of inconsistency that the article complains about doesn't matter. Pretty much every popular format looks like that. Try writing a Matroska or PDF decoder some time.
So a format should be designed wrong because other formats are also designed wrong.
> Because it isn't important.
So? You don't have to go out of your way to micro-optimize, others like TFA's author are already doing it for you. You just have to pick the micro-optimized product off the shelf.
"It isn't important" is a complete non-argument when the bad choices are made for no reason and no benefit at all and especially not even making the design process quicker and easier.
> If there's a replacement for XZ as a general-purpose compression format for archived data then it'll be selected on the quality of its compression, not whether the bitstream format can produce valid output from invalid input.
The article also addresses design problems that harm the compression ratio.
So a format should be designed wrong because other formats are also designed wrong.
> Because it isn't important.
So? You don't have to go out of your way to micro-optimize, others like TFA's author are already doing it for you. You just have to pick the micro-optimized product off the shelf.
"It isn't important" is a complete non-argument when the bad choices are made for no reason and no benefit at all and especially not even making the design process quicker and easier.
> If there's a replacement for XZ as a general-purpose compression format for archived data then it'll be selected on the quality of its compression, not whether the bitstream format can produce valid output from invalid input.
The article also addresses design problems that harm the compression ratio.