:''This is a sub-article to RISC OS.'' filetypes use

metadata Metadata is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive metadata – the descriptive ...

to distinguish

file format A file format is a standard way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file. It specifies how bits are used to encode information in a digital storage medium. File formats may be either proprietary or free. Some file formats ...

s. Some common file formats from other systems are mapped to filetypes by the MimeMap module. Such mapping was previously handled by DosMap. The MimeMap module maps filetypes to and from MIME content types, dotted

filename extension A filename extension, file name extension or file extension is a suffix to the name of a computer file (e.g., .txt, .docx, .md). The extension indicates a characteristic of the file contents or its intended use. A filename extension is typically d ...

s and Apple's

Uniform Type Identifier A Uniform Type Identifier (UTI) is a text string used on software provided by Apple Inc. to uniquely identify a given class or type of item. Apple provides built-in UTIs to identify common system objects – document or image file types, folders a ...

s. Requests for new filetype allocations for all versions are handled centrally by RISC OS Open.

RISC OS filetypes

Filetypes were originally classified by Acorn into distinct ranges:

User

This range of filetypes was intended for personal use in closed systems, not for general distribution. Nevertheless, many programs using these types were distributed, especially as

Public-domain software Public-domain software is software that has been placed in the public domain, in other words, software for which there is absolutely no ownership such as copyright, trademark, or patent. Software in the public domain can be modified, distributed, ...

. Consequently there are many clashes.

Non-commercial software

Commercial software

Acorn reserved

Generic data

References

External links

File Types
{{ndash Programmer's Reference Manuals at RISC OS Open wiki RISC OS filetypes RISC OS