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ANSI SAUCE
One of the problems with ANSI files, was a way to truly track via META data who the author was, and what group they represented. In 1994 SAUCE became a standard way of appending this META data and it continues to be in use today as a de facto standard within the ANSI art community. However, being created so many years ago, some of the common assumptions made back then are now cause for confusion. So, there is a revised version also in HTML format.
SAUCE was initially created for supporting only the ANSI and RIP formats.
HOW DOES IT WORK
Appended to a file, SAUCE has 4 parts: The original file contents, an End-Of-File or EOF character (Decimal 26, 0x1A, Ctrl+Z), an optional comment block and the SAUCE record.
The EOF character is an important part of what makes SAUCE work for text files. When processing a text file, the DOS / Windows TYPE command, most BBS terminal software and ANSI-viewers will all stop processing at the end of the file or when a EOF character is encountered with the EOF character itself not being rendered.
SPECIFICATIONS
| Fieldname | Type | Size | Description | Required 1) | Revision 2) | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ID | Character [3] | 5 | SAUCE identification. This should be equal to “SAUCE”. | yes | 00.0 | ||||||
| Version3) | Character [3] | 2 | SAUCE version number, should be “00”. | yes | 00.0 | ||||||
| Title | Character [3] | 35 | The title of the file. | no | 00.0 | ||||||
| Author | Character [3] | 20 | The (nick)name or handle of the creator of the file. | no | 00.0 | ||||||
| Group | Character [3] | 20 | The name of the group or company the creator is employed by. | no | 00.0 | ||||||
| Date | Character [3] | 8 | The date the file was created. The format for the date is CCYYMMDD (century, year, month, day). Example: 4 may 2013 would be stored as 20130504. | no | 00.0 | ||||||
| FileSize | Unsigned [4] | 4 | The original file size not including the SAUCE information. | no 4) | 00.0 | ||||||
| DataType | Unsigned [4] | 1 | Type of data. | yes | 00.0 | ||||||
| FileType | Unsigned [4] | 1 | Type of file. | yes | 00.0 | ||||||
| TInfo1 [7] | Unsigned [4] | 2 | Type dependent numeric information field 1. | no | 00.0 | ||||||
| TInfo2 [7] | Unsigned [4] | 2 | Type dependent numeric information field 2. | no | 00.0 | ||||||
| TInfo3 [7] | Unsigned [4] | 2 | Type dependent numeric information field 3. | no | 00.0 | ||||||
| TInfo4 [7] | Unsigned [4] | 2 | Type dependent numeric information field 4. | no | 00.0 | ||||||
| Comments | Unsigned [4] | 1 | Number of lines in the extra SAUCE comment block. 0 (zero) indicates no comment block is present. | no | 00.0 | ||||||
| TFlags [7] | Unsigned [4] | 1 | Type dependent flags. | no | 00.1 | ||||||
| TInfoS [7] | ZString [5] | 22 | Type dependent string information field | no | 00.5 | ||||||
