[SPG_Active_Members] DROID -- a tool potentially useful to CHM

[Tim Shoppa]

"H.M. Gladney" <hgladney at pacbell.net> wrote:
> An innovative tool to analyse and identify computer file formats has won the
> 2007 Digital Preservation Award. DROID, developed by The National Archives
> in London, can examine any mystery file and identify its format. The tool
> works by gathering clues from the internal 'signatures' hidden inside every
> computer file, as well as more familiar elements such as the filename
> extension (.jpg, for example), to generate a highly accurate 'guess' about
> the software that will be needed to read the file.

Um, isn't this what the command "file" has done under Unix for the
past 30 years?

# file /tmp/*
Sammett 1974 Roster of Programming Languages.doc: Rich Text Format data, version 1,
home.html:                                        HTML document text
refclock_palisade.h:                              ASCII C program text
refclock_zyfer.c:                                 ASCII C program text
refclock_zyfer.o:                                 ELF 32-bit LSB relocatable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), not stripped
rmsref.mem:                                       ASCII English text, with CRLF, CR, LF line terminators
vt52_logo_klein2.gif:                             GIF image data, version 89a, 150 x 43
vt52_logo_medium.jpg:                             JPEG image data, JFIF standard 1.02
vt52_new_03.jpg:                                  JPEG image data, JFIF standard 1.02

> Now, by using DROID and its big brother, the unique file format database
> known as PRONOM

All that said, the sources and documentation to DROID are online at

  http://droid.sourceforge.net/

Tim.
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