Well, thanks for paraphrasing what has already been said, now onto the why and how! As I said already, I'm still beginner with modding maps, so telling me how hard something is does not help at all, because everything has been a challenge so far, which I enjoy though else I wouldn't be trying.
I have not even gotten to reversing the tag data yet, I've just been focusing on extracting the tag data into files, so I can easily analyze it without calculating an offset every time I want to browse a tag in binary form. I was thinking of comparing the internal tag data to the tags that came with the H2 map editing tools to see what some of the differences might be. I could also reverse the functions used by the h2ek tools that manipulate the tag structures, not really that hard.
So, the purpose of changing the format of a tag to 'native form' is just so it can be used by the other tools in the h2ek? If so, why? Why can I not use the format that is already used by the map file to edit them with my own written tools? These are some answers I'm trying to get at, please help!