[zzo38computer]

I always insist to use plain ASCII text format to write the specification of any file format, since otherwise it will be difficult to read the specification in order to be able to implement it, so that you can read it. So, using file formats that are easy to retrieve and to read is especially important if the file contains the specification of another file format (I dislike that many formats unfortunately don't). This is also true of the protocols for accessing the file; a simple explanation should be possible in only a few sentences which is sufficient for accessing the specification file itself, even if the actual protocol is more complicated than that. However, in any case, there will be complexity in the other parts to support them (e.g. ASCII, MS-DOS, TCP/IP, etc), but hopefully you can use what is simpler than the alternative.