The AMB (Ancient Machine Book) format specification[ama]

AMA FORMAT

The AMA format is a text-based file format. For guaranteed interoperability with old machines, its maximum allowed size is 65535 bytes (ie. 2^16 - 1). Larger contents must be segmented into a set of two or more AMA articles. An AMB reader must display content with a 78-characters width, hence an AMA article must not contain any line longer than 78 displayable characters. Lines longer than this limit may be truncated by the client reader. AMA articles may contain control codes. A control code is a characters pair, where the first is a percent (%) character. Possible control codes: %t normal text follows (default state) %h

heading follows

%l link follows (filename ended by a ':', followed by a description) %! notice/warning follows %b boring text follows (usually displayed grey on grey) %% display a percent character (%) It is important to note that the current text mode is reset to %t at the end of every line, hence there is no need to prefix a line of text with %t. Line endings may be either LF or CR/LF. The former is recommended, as it is more compact. TAB control codes (ASCII decimal value 9) are NOT allowed in AMA files. Whenever an external URL appears in an AMA file (for example a link to a web page, to a ftp resource or to a gopher hole) it is encouraged to be enclosed between <> characters. Example: <http://amb.osdn.io>. This is only a typesetting recommendation based on RFC 3986, it is not part of the AMA specification. Following it would, however, make it much easier for modern AMB readers to detect such links automatically and make them clickable.