Dear Matthias Weißer,
Wrt the format: I understood from the mail from Reinhard that the way the env is stored is going to change anyway. I saw the patches of Wolfgang pass by, but didn't have time to study them yet.
What I meant, is, that with those patches and the environment in RAM not being a 1:1 copy of what is stored "on disk" anymore, its easy to write it in any format you desire onto "disk".
I also didn't go that deep into Wolfgangs patches but from what I understand the "on disk format" will not change. Will it?
No its not changed. Only the format in RAM is changed to a hashed list. Therefore it would not matter how it is stored on external media since a "read" and "write" function is needed anyway.
You only need to change/rewrite those functions to store the environment in any fashion you like...
Reinhard