Software needed for Emulation

As for most digital artifacts it is impossible to open e.g. a Word Perfect text document on plain computer hardware. In general rendering or accessing an object requires a typically large and often complex set of software components: not only the original software application and an operating system, but also other dependencies such as font sets, decompression software, codecs for audio and video files, and hardware drivers for video output, sound cards and peripheral devices. Hence, in addition to storing and managing the digital artifacts themselves, it is essential to store and manage a set of dependent software components too.