Thank you EVERYONE!
I'm going to read all of this several times before I go into any of it point for point.
But, I did want to interject one more idea.
What if I'm working with someone else, over the Internet on a set of frames. Lets say we develop a set of palettes that convey certain moods. We decide that our frames will be simple and may in fact contain less than 256 points; certainly less than 256 unique colors. So the first thing we want to do is know that we are painting with the same colors! I make a set of palettes (format 2) and all I do to make it a legit ILDA file is make a frame (format 1) with just a single line in it and use that as a dummy frame for each of the different palettes. If I could save that with format 2, then my collegue would get the palettes. If I save that as format 4 or 5. He gets nothing but one color from each of the palettes; and no palettes at all.
That is a loss of information and it kinda' goes against the idea that format 4 does it all.
Also, the most important design criteria for LaserBoy is that it uses ONLY open file format standards; .ild, .bmp, .wav, .dxf, etc. So by that rule, I have no other options for storing laser vector art. I have no motivation at all to create a LaserBoy proprietary format.
James.