Summary
| Purpose | Format Identification for Digital Objects |
| Homepage |
http://www.openplanetsfoundation.org/software/fido |
| Source Code Repository |
https://github.com/openplanets/fido |
| License |
Apache 2.0 Open Source License |
| Debian Package |
Description
FIDO (Format Identification for Digital Objects) is a simple format identification CLI tool for digital objects that uses PRONOM signatures converted to regular expressions. Functionally FIDO can be compared with DROID, sans the GUI.
FIDO is free, Apache 2.0 licensed, easy to install, and runs on any platform with Python installed. Most importantly, FIDO is very fast.
FIDO utilizes all available PRONOM signatures to identify digital objects. When an object can not be identified it will try to identify the object based on extension.
FIDO outputs results in CSV format by default. Available output fields can be formatted on runtime per the requirements of the user.
FIDO supports custom signatures which are not (yet) available through the PRONOM registry.
FIDO is able to identify container based (compound) formats such as Office documents and includes functionality to update PRONOM signatures.
History
FIDO was originally developed in 2010 by Adam Farquhar of British Library. The tool has been adopted by the Open Planets Foundation in 2011 and is currently maintained by Maurice de Rooij of the National Archives of the Netherlands (NANETH). In October 2011 NANETH has succesfully implemented FIDO as a webservice in the Dutch e-Depot.
Future
See FIDO roadmap
Contributing
Feedback about FIDO is very welcome. Please consult Getting Started with the OPF for more information.
User Experiences
e.g. links to AQuA/SCAPE/Hackathon issues that use the tool