[deathanatos]

I would say Netpbm is similar. Writing it is easy. … reading it … not so much.

PPM is just one format; Netpbm is like a whole family. The "P6" is sort of the identifier that we're using that format — the other identifiers can identify other formats, like greyscale, or monochrome, or the pixel data is encoded in ASCII. The header is in text and permits more flexibility than it probably should. Channels greater than a byte are supported.

Writing a parser for the whole lot would be more complex. (I think TIFF would still beat it, though.) Just dumping RGB? Easy.