FILE_ID.DIZ
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FILE_ID.DIZ is a plain text file containing a brief content description of the archive in which it is included. It was originally used in archives distributed through bulletin board systems (BBS).
Bulletin boards commonly accept uploaded files from their users. The BBS software would prompt the user to supply a description for the uploaded file, but these descriptions were often less than useful. BBS system operators spent many hours going over the upload descriptions correcting and editing the descriptions. The FILE_ID.DIZ inclusion in archives was designed to address this problem.
FILE_ID stands for "file identification". DIZ stands for Description In Zipfile.
The FILE_ID.DIZ file was invented by Michael Leavitt, an employee of Clark Development for use on his own large personal PCBoard BBS (The Graphics Connection). He also wrote the original PCBDescribe utility. Its purpose was to easily allow the software authors to describe their work without uploaders having to manually type in a description every time they uploaded a file to a BBS.
Clark Development and the Association of Shareware Professionals supported the idea of this becoming a standard for file descriptions. Clark rewrote the PCBDescribe program and included it with their PCBoard BBS software. The ASP urged their members to use this description file format in their distributions. Mr. Leavitt released the file specification and his PCBDescribe program source code to the public domain and urged other BBS software companies to support the DIZ file.
Traditionally, FILE_ID.DIZ's should be "up to 10 lines of text, each line being no more than 45 characters long." according to the specification v1.9 — this restriction however is rarely used nowadays.[citation needed]
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- FILE_ID.DIZ Specification v1.9 by Richard Holler. (archive.org 2007-12-04 cache)
