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. (ZIP was a common archive type in BBS days and was thus used as a common name for archive formats.)

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.

Although dial-up BBSes are no longer in general use, the DIZ file inclusion is still being added to distribution files. It is hoped that internet software developers will make use of this file inclusion to automatically generate file descriptions for their directories.

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.

1 Observation about the .diz extension
2 Advertisements in FILE_ID.DIZ files
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Observation about the .diz extension

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When written in lowercase, "file_id.diz", the DIZ extension appears roughly as .zip would, if it were mirrored both horizontally and vertically simultaneously. Given this, it's possible that the "description in zipfile" acronym is really a backcronym.

An interesting observation — but the creator of the DIZ system would like to clarify that it's an acronym for Description In Zipfile — nothing more. The primary reason that FILE_ID.DIZ was selected was to have a unique file name and extension that would not conflict with any known file name and also be somewhat descriptive of the purpose of the included file. By having a unique defined name for the file it was possible for a simple batch file to call PKUNZIP to extract the file — and test the return code to see if the file was included. PCBDescribe would take the DIZ file, reformat the contents to exclude illegal characters and fancy formatting, then insert the cleaned description into the BBS file directory.

Many BBS systems grew their file libraries by requiring users to upload a certain number of files (or bytes) before they could download a certain number of files (or bytes). This worked well for keeping a selection of new files available — but many of the people uploading files were less than careful about the description they entered for their upload. Things like "A good file" or "Great game" or even the ever-popular "asdfasdf" didn't help others find useful downloads — leading the overworked BBS sysops to spend many, many hours looking at the uploaded files and writing good descriptions for them. The DIZ system helped the BBS sysop because uploaded files with a DIZ inside carried a good description. Shareware authors favoured the system because it allowed them to choose the description that would appear with their files on BBS systems around the world.

Although the DIZ file fell into decline along with the dialup BBSes for which the format was designed, today DIZ files are commonly used in warez archives.

[edit] Advertisements in FILE_ID.DIZ files

Some sysops configured their BBSes to automatically add an advertisement for their BBSes to the FILE_ID.DIZ file within all uploaded archives, usually a single line at the end of the description with the name of the BBS. This would be shown users on other BBSes in the file listing when the file was further spread to other BBSes - often annoying their sysops (and users). Complex upload processing tools (with blacklists) were used to filter advertisements from FILE_ID.DIZ files.