Joliet Specification for CD-ROM

ID: Q125630

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Win32 Software Development Kit (SDK)

Content authors who are developing Windows 95 applications on CD-ROM should develop their titles according to the Joliet specification in order to incorporate Unicode file names and take full advantage of Windows 95 long file name support.

The Joliet specification complies with the ISO 9660:1988 standard. It is designed to resolve some of its restrictions and ambiguities including:

Character Set limitations.
File Name Length limitations.
Directory Tree Depth limitations.
Directory Name Format limitations.
Unicode Character ambiguities.

Because the Joliet specification is ISO 9660 compliant, CD-ROM disks recorded according to the Joliet specification may continue to interchange data with non-Joliet systems. The designs for the System Use Sharing Protocol, RockRidge extensions for POSIX semantics, CD-XA System Use Area Semantics, and Apple's Finder Flags and Resource Forks all port in a straightforward manner to the Joliet specification. These protocols are not an integral part of the Joliet specification, however.

Support for Joliet is included in Windows 95, and the spec is now included in the Win95 DDK docs. It will also be included in a future version of Windows NT.

Additional query words: 4.00 CD CD-ROM XA SUSP ROCKRIDGE LFN

Keywords          : SubSys 
Version           : 4.0
Platform          : WINDOWS

Last Reviewed: May 30, 1997