Welcome to Sofu

Sofu is a file format that is designed to store data in a form that both humans and computer programs can easily read and write. It is based on plain text, meaning that Sofu files can be edited with any text editor. The current version 0.2 of Sofu is based on Unicode 4.0, enabling you to use any character of any language in the world without the restrictions of ASCII and character sets.

The key points of Sofu are:

• Read and write data in a simple-to-learn, simple-to-master file format
• The Sofu file format minimalizes visual overhead, making Sofu files easy to grasp and to edit in a text editor
• The tree layout of Sofu files fits in perfectly with Object Oriented Programming
• Libraries for use with Sofu are available for the D Programming Language and Perl

Sofu grew up in the environment of 72 hour game making challenges, so its design focuses on getting things done quickly. Sofu aims to be a flexible, robust tool that is easy to deploy.

The latest Sofud version is 0.2.3b

Sofu development news: See randomZ's coding blog

Latest News

2008-03-08: Sofu.net 0.2.1 is done, supports SofuML and Binary sofu. Documentation got updateted as well, check out the examples.

2008-02-18: Sofu.pm: Data::Sofu Version 0.29 is finished. Now includes a lot of Unittest and support for SofuML. Sofu.net 0.21 up next (Binary and SofuML are already working, just testing and bugfixing phase now)

2008-02-13: Sofu.pm: Data::Sofu Version 0.28 and Config::Sofu Version 0.4 is finished. Added support for binary sofu files, SofuD interface and a lot of feature planned for Sofu 1.0

2008-02-12: Sofu.Net released (after two days of coding). SofuBrowser (using Sofu.Net) was also released. Support for binary .sofu soon to come.

2007-02-26: Sofud 0.3 is still not ready, but development hasn't stopped, either. I hope to have a little more time in the near future and a somewhat less busy semester starting in April. Sofud is not a big application - if I concentrate my efforts for a few days, it should be possible to make substantial progress. Please bear with me.

2006-07-23: I found another bug related to floating point conversion of values, so I've released Sofud 0.2.3b.

2006-07-23: Sofud 0.2.3 has been released. The only change is that it was adapted to work with the new DMD 0.163. Meanwhile, Sofu 0.3 is progressing, but slowly. Maybe expect something by the end of the year (yeah I know, that's a long time... but I'll be abroad for the next two months).

2006-06-25: Things have been quiet for a very long time on this web site. While the current release 0.2.2 of Sofud is very stable and usable, it's time to move on: Version 0.3 of the Sofu file format is to be released some time soon, followed by Version 0.3 of the Sofud library. If you're interested in following the development process, you can read my coding blog.