P1003 plans to standardize error recovery and, in particular, positioning after an error. A misunderstanding occurred about the first item in the requirements. Mike Peterson thought they were planning to open, read, write, etc. media. They are really talking about devices with removable media. There was a comment that the problems are not confined to removable media.
Proper media is allocated, mounted etc.
It is essentially a block addressing model with the ability to trim bytes at either end. The question of the tapes being proprietary then arose. It was agreed that the tapes are probably proprietary to the model because the mover does not assume any format, labels, etc. The life cycle of the tape involves more than its format. The tapes must be readable for many years.