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

[H.M. Gladney]

I suspect, without having read any specifications, that DROID works well for
many more kinds of files than the "file" command and that it provides more
detailed information for many cases (e.g., version numbers).  However, it
bears checking out.

Having seen many cases in which the archiving/librarian community seems to
pay insufficient attention to what is already known and/or available from
other communities, I also suspect a certain amount of wheel reinvention. 

Cheerio, Henry

-----Original Message-----
From: Tim Shoppa [mailto:shoppa at trailing-edge.com] 
Sent: Friday, September 28, 2007 3:41 PM
To: hgladney at pacbell.net; aek at bitsavers.org
Cc: scc_active at computerhistory.org
Subject: Re: [SPG_Active_Members] DROID -- a tool potentially useful to CHM

"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.
/