Compiled ink format requirements and goals

I am currently noodling around with an alternative to the JSON compiled ink format. My current goals are to have small file sizes, faster loading, and no third-party dependencies. However, I'd be keen to know what the original requirements and goals were for the current format so that I can see if my approach could cover those too. For example, the current format is obviously JSON as opposed to a binary format; so the files are easy to parse in alternative languages, are arguably human readable, etc. But if these are not actually requirements of the compiled format then more improvements are possible.

In any case I am still at the experimentation stage so nothing may come of this, but the above info would be handy to document regardless.

No file, test, or entry point is named in the issue. Investigate the current JSON compiled ink format and the historical requirements behind it; done means documenting those requirements and clarifying whether readability, portability, file size, loading speed, and dependency constraints are required.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.