rapps-db/README.md
Mark Jansen 5b5d057adc Clarify the file encoding
Co-authored-by: Stanislav Motylkov <x86corez@gmail.com>
2021-10-03 16:32:54 +02:00

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For more information about RAPPS, please take a look at the wiki

ADDING PROGRAMS TO THE RAPPS DATABASE

Each program entry consists of a text file formatted with an INI-like syntax.

They must be encoded in UTF-8 without BOM (Byte Order Mask) in this repository. However, when you are testing a new entry file with RAPPS in ReactOS or Windows, they are stored in UTF-16 LE (Little Endian) encoding in the rapps folder on disk - otherwise characters out of the ANSI range will display broken. Note: some editors like Notepad++ call this format UCS-2 Little Endian.

Each [Section] is language-independent and individual, you can override the URL to a source program or any other field by adding a language-specific [Section.], followed by the language code.

Note: You can find a complete listing of LCIDs and language names on MSDN, includes neutral codes:

RAPPS also accepts neutral language codes, meaning that you can do things like this:

 ; Default English fallback, used if everything else fails.
  [Section]
  Name = Name in English

  ; Neutral Spanish, used if the specific variant of Spanish does not match.
  [Section.0a]
  Name = Name in Generic Spanish

  ; Spanish from Spain, used if the system is configured for it.
  [Section.0c0a]
  Name = Name in Castilian Spanish

You can also define an entry without English fallback to make it visible to certain users only. For instance; software from 1C, which is mostly for Russian speakers and unusable for anyone else.

For a complete file format overview see the File Schema on the ReactOS wiki

The mandatory fields are: Name, Category, URLDownload and SizeBytes. All other fields are completely optional and can be skipped.

List of valid categories:

  1. Audio
  2. Video
  3. Graphics
  4. Games
  5. Internet
  6. Office
  7. Development
  8. Edutainment
  9. Engineering
  10. Finance
  11. Science
  12. Tools
  13. Drivers
  14. Libraries
  15. Themes
  16. Other

The official list of downloadable programs is kept on a public ReactOS server and synced every time RAPPS is launched for the first time.