ISO Master

This is the old website, please go to the new website.

bkisofs

1. bkisofs Usage and Reference Manual
   
   
2. El Torito Specification Supplement, a document i wrote explaining a couple of misgivings of the El Torito Spec.
   
   
3. A diagram of the relationship between directory records, directories and file contents.
   
   
4. The current state of the i18n system is shown in this diagram.
   
   

My sources

1. The very basics are described in an old standard originally developed by ECMA. The very same document was addopted as the ISO9660 standard. Download here (ps).
   
   
2. This is a copy of the official (I think) ISO9660-1998. Differences from ECMA-119 are insignificant. Don't think anyone has payed much attention to the 1998 updates, probably came out too late. Download here (uncompressed html).
   
   
3. ISO9660 defines fields for each directory record and leaves the implementation for later standardization. These are called system use fields. A document with guidelines for use of these fields has been developed. As far as I know RockRidge is the only extension that conforms to these guidelines. Download here (ps).
   
   
4. ISO9660 does not provide enough detail to insure all file/directory attributes defined by POSIX are recorded. The Rock Ridge group made a popular extension to ISO9660 to support all such attributes. Download here (ps).
   
   
5. Microsoft had to come up with their own thing and in this case I think they did a good job. The Joliet extension to ISO9660 extends the number of characters to lowercase as well as uppercase, supports unicode and longer file names. Download here (uncompressed html).
   
   
6. Booting from a CD used to be impossible until IBM and Phoenix developed a specification for both the BIOS and the disk to allow it. They called it El Torito. Download here (ps).