Hey,
Hmmmm.... should this go here, or under Request App. Well here for now...
NirSoft (http://www.nirsoft.net/) - creator of roughly 85 utilities, all of which are portable! - maintains PAD files for each utility.
PAD files are "Portable Application Description" XML files which contain all the info about a portable application. They are especially useful when trying to keep applications up to date automatically.
The PAD file specification is maintained by the Association of Shareware Professionals, and info on it can be found here: http://www.asp-shareware.org/pad/
It would sure be great if there were PAD files available for each Portable App! Please PM me if this ever becomes available!
Jerry
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PAD files actually aren't used much by major software vendors. They're used by some shareware publishers, but aren't used by many open source of commercial publishers.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Mayor commercial software vendors are not the goal of PAD, but many commercial vendors do use it. And PAD files are useful to publish your software to 100's of software sites in one go, making sure the information is always up-to-date.
PAD is still up and coming and try to make an uniform way to offer information about any software title.
I myself used it and I auto generate the PAD from info of the CVS / SVN on publish. That includes uploading the PAD file.
If John does not make a PAD file himself, someone else could make the PAD and keep them up-to-date.
John, maybe you should consider using a PAD file to publish PAF to a much broader range of customers. The only real disadvantage is that the PAD includes a direct download link which may mean some people will not visit the site.
Just letting you know that the biggest software sites use PAD, some even ONLY use PAD files nowadays. It's not some obscure new format, its been around for some time now
I bet you could write a program that would pretty quickly take the app\appinfo\appinfo.ini and turn it into PAD.
MC
I've had about 4 people the whole time I've been doing this request PADs. Only one was a software directory and it was a pretty small one. The other 3 were individual users that were using a shareware PAD monitoring software. To my knowledge, none of the larger software directories use PAD files at all. Unless I can get some real world examples of large software directories and software projects that use it, I'm still going to pass.
If PAD had really caught on, large sites like SourceForge, Google Code, etc would have it built into the file distribution systems.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
I did a bit more research and the more I do, the more it seems like PAD files were mostly a shareware-only thing that never really caught on outside that realm. And, since shareware's popularity passed some time ago, it looks like PAD's popularity did as well.
If anyone can chime in and provide other information, I'm happy to look at it. But, from my research, it appears that PAD files would provide us no benefit.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
The PAD format was published by http://www.asp-shareware.org/pad/ (Association Of Shareware Professionals) and is in essence for Shareware and Freeware (although it also has pointers for commercial and demo software). A list of software sites supporting it is here: http://198.63.208.118/pad/padsites.asp
I don't think Commercial software is the goal for PAD, as it seems to be aimed at smaller publications.
About fading popularity of shareware I don't know. Personally I switched from shareware (and freeware for that matter) to Open Source. I don't think Open Source is excluded by the PAD format though. (As mentioned before, my own open source project uses PAD and after publishing the PAD file it's now available on a lot of sites and the number of downloads has risen accordingly.) To be honest, I think shareware will always continue to exist.
The FAQ on the ASP site will show you some answers why people should / would use PAD files. The benefit I see is: all sites showing info on software automatically are up to date, easy to submit / update PAD files to many websites and that results in a broader platform of attention for the software (resulting in more downloads).
I myself also use PAD files to: check for updates function and even generate the product page all from the same source. ( http://albartus.com/pad/ shows an example of my own PAD publisher. It's on the 3rd party tools page, no affiliation though)
But I guess most information you already checked out.
Yeah, I saw all of that. The fact that the site looks like it was last updated in 1998 probably swayed me as well. If you look into it further, you'll see that their main site looks much more modern ( http://www.asp-shareware.org/ ) but they never even bothered to update the old PAD pages for it. So it looks like even the creator is acknowledging that PAD isn't worth the trouble.
And all the download sites that claim to use it are oddball sites like 1supercooldownloadaday.net or something similar. Several of the links are dead. And some look like spyware sites.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
I admire your research but the remarks about the site's design looks like 1998 is a bit unfair. It is made for pure informative purposes. Saying that even the creator acknowledging PAD isn't worth the trouble purely based on the sober design is not in par with the effort they do put in by updating the format and tool, PHP software and support on the newsgroup. That is the opinion formed purely from the site design.
The sites mentioned in the list features indeed a lot of oddball sites because their software makes it possible for every oddball to make a software download site, and also dead links I agree to, doesn't give a great impression.
But sites like Softpedia support PAD ( http://www.softpedia.com/user/submit.shtml ) and also download.com supports it if I remember correctly (as I see my software "ISSI", "PAD-Publisher" to name two, are listed there, and that most likely happened using a PAD submission. Especially when I look at the descriptions)
Of course the choice whether or not to support it is all yours
I meant that even the main proponent didn't bother to update the old PAD pages when they did a full site redesign. And they only make reference to it in their main site as a small link to the word PAD on one page. So, it doesn't really appear that they're doing anything with it themselves anymore.
It would appear that Softpedia supports PAD submissions, but they also support regular submissions. They review every version to ensure virus, spyware, etc checks. And they make no mention of whether they monitor the PAD files for updates. Plus, Softpedia appears to monitor the RSS feeds of PortableApps.com and the associated SourceForge project and posts updates to apps within a few days, so posting a PAD would gain nothing from them. I've never updated Softpedia, yet they're on top of new app releases before most other sites.
I don't think Download.com supports PAD files any more than manual submissions. And they're often behind in terms of the latest version. They claim it takes 30 days or more once you make a submission unless you pay for the premium service (monthly fee).
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
It's kind of sad that there doesn't seem to be any appreciation of how useful this is. I'm kind of surprised it hasn't caught on.
As I mentioned NirSoft uses them, and also maintains a Zip file of all the PAD files for all the utilities. I was able to write a script in a few minutes that downloaded and unzipped all thier utilities.
One thing sorely missing with Portable Apps is an easy way to find out what the current version is. I don't mean the news feeds currently available - they don't have the info. I'd want to see app name, Portable package version, program version, and a URL to download it from. A PAD could supply that.
Oh well....
J
I'm working on that
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."
Don't I remember you working on an auto-updater thingy for PortableApps? Wouldn't this tie in nicely? I seem to recall that one of the big sticking points was how to tell what was most current production vs. what was installed.
Michael D. Shook
Same system. Won't involve much processing for the client side app, as it will mostly be serverside.
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."