*.nfo

.nfo (also written .NFO or NFO, a contraction of "info", or "information") is a commonly used three-letter filename extension of ASCII or extended ASCII text files that accompany other files and contain information about them. Such NFO files can be viewed with text editors or dedicated NFO viewers.[1] They commonly also contain elaborate ASCII art.

Different kinds of files with the same NFO filename extension on Microsoft Windows PCs are data files associated with a Microsoft software tool called System Information. Generally speaking, these kinds of files are less often being referred to when "NFO files" are being mentioned.

NFO files usually contain release information about a software program. They are commonly associated with warez groups who include them to declare credit of and "bragging rights" over said release. Similarly they are often found in demoscene productions, where the respective groups include them for credits, contact details, and the software requirements.

NFO files were common, and sometimes required, during the era of the BBS. A typical warez NFO file was elaborate and highly decorated, and usually included a large ASCII art logo along with software release and warez group information. The designers of these NFO files frequently incorporated extended ASCII characters from the then near-ubiquitous code page 437 character set in the file.

Before Windows 95 was introduced, NFO files also sometimes used ANSI-escape sequences to generate animated ASCII art (ANSI art). These animations, however, required ANSI.SYS to be loaded by the DOS shell. If the user's computer wasn't already configured to load the ANSI.SYS driver, viewing ANSI art required reconfiguring and rebooting. Because of this, ANSI art was much less common, and getting ANSI art to display correctly on a Windows 95 PC often proved more difficult, leading to a decline of such art in NFO files.

As of 2008, NFO files can still be found in many ZIP archives. In modern day warez NFO files, a large ASCII art logo is frequently shown at the top, followed by textual information below. Instead of using the old code page 437 extended ASCII characters, modern ASCII art uses the current de-facto web standard ISO-8859-1/ISO-8859-15 or Unicode UTF-8 characters.

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  Kristjan 9 months ago
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  Add what ever You want inside NFO file!