The only problem is that most of the stuff on discs was only ever in that format and sequential format like TAP is kind of no-sensical - what happens when you want to write the high score table back to disc? Update a file?
Discs was (and still is) the standard way of distributing SAM software. The only reason for any TAP support must be to archive the Flash! tape, the SAMDOS tape and the two games ever released on tape in a reproducible format.
I dodn't say we have to use exactly TAP! I just wanted to say that a file-based format could be better than a physical copy of a sam disk. If you don't like TAP, I can offer you ZIP or something... We can store all additional information (like start line number of a basic program) to file names inside ZIP. If you ask how to load and use this TAP or ZIP, I say: The emulator (or another utility) simply copy these files to a disk, add "samdos2" image and "auto" loader, and boots it. The advantage of a file-based format si that it allows to combine several programs, i.e. to put several different programs to a single disk. If you have a file-based archive, you know exactly what files belong to a program, and you can work with it easier.
There is no practical reason for having separate single-file archives (as opposed to discs). The extra amount of a compressed SAMDOS2 file takes is a minuscle 7K and if one is unhappy with the layout, one can always change it oneself. :)
I see this reason: It is very convenient to have 15 games on a single disk (if they can fit there). To have 15 different diskettes for 15 short games was never very popular approach. You don't see this reason "practical"?
From the server point of view, I think we can always store a classicalDSK/SAD disk image, and add any other file-based archive as a secondary source, if somebody would be interested in using it.
/--
Aley
