Generate binary files for third party programmers

Just found the tool and tried it. But the result looks completely different from the reference I have. If I compare my binary reference file with the one generated by sof2flash there is a significant difference. First of all the generated .flash file is a text file and not binary. The file shows binary values but they seem to be completely different from the ones i have in my binary reference file. The sof2flash tool description says: "The sof2flash utility takes an FPGA configuration file in SOF format and translates it to a FLASH file that can be programmed into the flash memory connected to an Altera FPGA". This lets me assume that the genereated file could directly be programmed to the flash. But with the file I have now, this is definitively not possible.