FILE_ID.DIZ is a

plain-text In computing, plain text is a loose term for data (e.g. file contents) that represent only characters of readable material but not its graphical representation nor other objects (floating-point numbers, images, etc.). It may also include a limi ...

file containing a brief description of the content of the

archive An archive is an accumulation of historical records or materials, in any medium, or the physical facility in which they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or organ ...

to which it belongs. Such files were originally used in archives distributed through

bulletin board system A bulletin board system (BBS), also called a computer bulletin board service (CBBS), is a computer server running list of BBS software, software that allows users to connect to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, the user perfor ...

s (BBSes) and is still used in the

warez scene The Warez scene, often referred to as The Scene, is an underground network of piracy groups specialized in obtaining and illegally releasing digital media before their official release date. The Scene distributes all forms of digital media, incl ...

. stands for "file identification". stands for "description in zipfile". Traditionally, a FILE_ID.DIZ should be "up to 10 lines of text, each line being no more than 45 characters long", according to v.1.9 of the specification. The concept of .DIZ files was to allow for a concise description of uploaded files to be automatically applied.

History

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 inclusion in archives was designed to address this problem. Clark Development and the Association of Shareware Professionals (ASP) supported the idea of this becoming a standard for file descriptions. Clark rewrote the PCBDescribe program and included it with their

PCBoard PCBoard (PCB) was a bulletin board system (BBS) application first introduced for DOS in 1983 by Fred Clark's Clark Development Company. PCBoard was one of the first commercial BBS packages for DOS systems, and was considered one of the "high end ...

BBS software. The ASP urged their members to use this description file format in their distributions. Michael Leavitt, an employee of Clark Development, 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. SysOps could add a common third-party script written in PPL, called "DIZ/2-PCB" that would process, rewrite, verify, and format DIZ files from archives as they were uploaded to a BBS. The software would extract the archive, examine the contents, compile a report, import the DIZ description file and then format it according to your liking. During this time, it was usual practice to add additional lines to the description, such as ads exclaiming the source of the uploaded BBS. Even since the decline of the

dial-up Dial-up Internet access is a form of Internet access that uses the facilities of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) to establish a connection to an Internet service provider (ISP) by dialing a telephone number on a conventional telepho ...

, FILE_ID.DIZ files are still utilized by the

in their releases of unlicensed software. They are commonly bundled as part of the complete packaging by pirate groups, and indicate the number of disks, and other basic information. Along with the NFO file, it is essential to the release.

Formal structure

While real-world use among BBSs varied, with the NPD world and even different BBS brands coming up with expanded versions, the official format is: Plain, 7-bit ASCII text, each line no more than 45 characters wide. # Program/file name: Ideally, all uppercase and followed by one space. Carriage returns are ignored in this file. # Version number: In the format "v1.123", followed by a space. # ASP number: Only if an actual ASP member, otherwise ignored. # Description separator: A single short hyphen "-". # Description: The description of the file. The first two lines should be the short summary, as older boards cut off the rest. Anything beyond that should be extended description, for up to eight lines, the official cut-off size. Additional text could be included beyond that but might not be included by the board. Many archives would stick strictly to the 45-character plain ASCII format for the first 8 lines, then contain an appended 80-character wide 8-bit ASCII or ANSI graphic page with better-formatted documentation after that.

References

External links

FILE_ID.DIZ Specification
v1.9 by Richard Holler.

Bulletin board systems Filenames Third-party DOS files Warez Articles with underscores in the title

History

Formal structure

See also

References

Further reading

External links