What is PAD file?

Hi,
I want to know what does PAD url mean exactly? I searched in google but couldn't find the exact answers, so i request some web masters to explain about this clearly.

 

PAD means portable application description...

 

I didn't ask the expansion for PAD. Even a kid knows this. I ask'd for a brief explanation.

 

Portable Application Description is a machine-readable document format designed by the Association of Shareware Professionals.

It allows authors to provide product descriptions and specifications to online sources in a standard way, using a standard data format, a simplified subset of XML, that will allow webmasters and program librarians to automate program listings. PAD saves time for both authors and webmasters.

Each field in the specification has a regular expression (regex) associated with it. The regex acts as a constraint on the field: if the regex matches, the field value is legal and if it fails to match, the field and the PAD file as a whole are out of spec. Only files where all fields in the file pass validation are properly called PAD files.

The simplifications in PAD over XML are primarily PAD does not use name/value pairs in tags. All tags are attribute-free. This is less expressive than XML but easier to parse. The official PAD spec uses unique tags. To extract the fields in the official spec, it is not necessary to descend through the tag path. However, if multiple languages are represented in a single PAD file, then correct parsing does require descending though the tag path because leaf tags are duplicated for each language supported.

 

Thanks aana...Good Sharing of Knowledge

 

Thanks buddy. Helps me a lot.

 

PAD file is specially creates for submitting software related sites. With the PAD file, you can find complete info about a software like version, prices, contact, screen-shot, keywords and more.

 

If you have PAD files for real software packages, feel free to submit them to the second site in my sig.

 

PAD was developed by the ASP to make it easier to submit software to download sites. The PAD file contains meta data about software applications.

PAD Info - http://www.asp-shareware.org/pad/

 

PAD file is a clear and easy way for software authors to provide online sources with information about their products. The advantage of using a PAD file is that it enables you to store all the descriptions and specifications in one single place - system requirements, price, contact info, file names, download URL's and more.