Open Document Standard (.odt) for all documents. In all public institutions (it's already a NATO standard for documents).
Because the Microsoft Word ones (.doc, .docx) are unusable outside the Microsoft Office ecosystem. I feel outraged every time I need to edit .docx file because it breaks the layout easily. And some older .doc files cannot even work with Microsoft Word.
Actually, IMHO, there should be some better alternative to .odt as well. Something more out of a declarative/scripted fashion like LaTeX but still WYSIWYG. LaTeX (and XeTeX, for my use cases) is too messy for me to work with, especially when a package is Byzantine. And it can be non-reproducible if I share/reuse the same document somewhere else.
zip or 7z for compressed archives. I hate that for some reason rar has become the defacto standard for piracy. It's just so bad.
The other day I saw a tar.gz containing a multipart-rar which contained an iso which contained a compressed bin file with an exe to decompress it. Soooo unnecessary.
Edit: And the decompressed game of course has all of its compressed assets in renamed zip files.
Produces better compression ratios than the DEFLATE compression algorithm (used by .zip and gzip/.gz) and does so faster.
By separating the jobs of archiving (.tar), compressing (.zst), and (if you so choose) encrypting (.gpg), .tar.zst follows the Unix philosophy of "Make each program do one thing well.".
.tar.xz is also very good and seems more popular (probably since it was released 6 years earlier in 2009), but, when tuned to it's maximum compression level, .tar.zst can achieve a compression ratio pretty close to LZMA (used by .tar.xz and .7z) and do it faster^1.
zstd and xz trade blows in their compression ratio. Recompressing all packages to zstd with our options yields a total ~0.8% increase in package size on all of our packages combined, but the decompression time for all packages saw a ~1300% speedup.
Can handle lossy images, lossless images, images with transparency, images with layers, and animated images, giving it the potential of being a universal image format.
Much better quality and compression efficiency than current lossy and lossless image formats (.jpeg, .png, .gif).
Produces much smaller files for lossless images than AVIF^2
Supports much larger resolutions than AVIF's 9-megapixel limit (important for lossless images).
Supports up to 24-bit color depth, much more than AVIF's 12-bit color depth limit (which, to be fair, is probably good enough).
it’s already a NATO standard for documents
Because the Microsoft Word ones (.doc, .docx) are unusable outside the Microsoft Office ecosystem. I feel outraged every time I need to edit .docx file because it breaks the layout easily. And some older .doc files cannot even work with Microsoft Word.
I don't know what to pick, but something else than PDF for the task of transferring documents between multiple systems. And yes, I know, PDF has it's strengths and there's a reason why it's so widely used, but it doesn't mean I have to like it.
Additionally all proprietary formats, specially ones who have gained enough users so that they're treated like a standard or requirement if you want to work with X.
Resume information. There have been several attempts, but none have become an accepted standard.
When I was a consultant, this was the one standard I longed for the most. A data file where I could put all of my information, and then filter and format it for each application. But ultimately, I wanted to be able to submit the information in a standardised format - without having to re-enter it endlessly into crappy web forms.
I think things have gotten better today, but at the cost of a reliance on a monopoly (LinkedIn). And I'm not still in that sort of job market. But I think that desire was so strong it'll last me until I'm in my grave.
I wish there was a more standardized open format for documents. And more people and software should use markdown/.md because you just don't need anything fancier for most types of documents.
Data output from manufacturing equipment. Just pick a standard. JSON works. TOML / YAML if you need to write as you go. Stop creating your own format that’s 80% JSON anyways.
I don't give a shit which debugging format any platform picks, but if they could each pick one that every emulator reads and every compiler emits, that'd be fucking great.
I'd like an update to the epub ebook format that leverages zstd compression and jpeg-xl. You'd see much better decompression performance (especially for very large books,) smaller file sizes and/or better image quality. I've been toying with the idea of implementing this as a .zpub book format and plugin for KOReader but haven't written any code for it yet.
XML for machine-readable data because I live to cause chaos
Either markdown or Org for human-readable text-only documents. MS Office formats and the way they are handled have been a mess since the 2007 -x versions were introduced, and those and Open Document formats are way too bloated for when you only want to share a presentable text file.
While we're at it, standardize the fucking markdown syntax! I still have nightmares about Reddit's degenerate four-space-indent code blocks.
JPEG XL for images because it compresses better than JPEG, PNG and WEBP most of the time.
XZ because it theoretically offers the highest compression ratio in most circumstances, and long decompression time isn't really an issue when the alternative is downloading a larger file over a slow connection.
Config files stored as serialized data structures instead of in plain text. This speeds up read times and removes the possibility of syntax or type errors. Also, fuck JSON.
I wish there were a good format for typesetting. Docx is closed and inflexible. LaTeX is unreadable, inefficient to type and hard to learn due to the inconsistencies that arise from its reliance on third-party packages and its lack of guidelines for their design.
Definitely FLAC for audio because it's lossless, if you record from a high fidelity source....
exFAT for external hard drives and SD cards because both Windows and Mac can read and write to it as well as Linux. And you don't have the permission pain....
Some sort of machine-readable format for invoices and documents with related purposes (offers, bills of delivery, receipts,...) would be useful to get rid of some more of the informal paper or PDF human-readable documents we still use a lot. Ideally something JSON-based, perhaps with a cryptographic signature and encryption layer around it.
i hate to be that guy, but pick the right tool for the right job. use markdown for a readme and latex for a research paper. you dont need to create 'the ultimate file format' that can do both, but worse and less compatible
Something for I/Q recordings. But I don't know what would do it. Currently the most supported format seems to be s16be WAV, but there's different formats, bit depths and encodings. I've seen .iq, .sdriq, .sdr, .raw, .wav. Then there's different bit depths and encodings: u8, s8, s16be, s16le, f32,... Also there's different ways metadata like center frequency is stored.
Some new format for DAW session files that is compatible with all DAWs. I believe ardour can import protools files but I bet a lot. Of work went into that.
OTDR measurement results in like XML or whatever open self documenting format, just not SOR. Or even just in actual standards compliant SOR, if that's all I can get.
MKV
It supports high-quality video and audio codecs, allowing for lossless compression and high-definition content. Also MKV supports chapter and menu functionality, making it suitable to rip DVD to MKV and store DVDs and Blu-ray discs.
The CD was the worst thing to happen in the history of audio.
44 (or 48) kHz is awful, and it is still prevalent. It would be better to wait a few more years and have better quality.