IPF (Interchangeable Preservation Format)

IPF stands for Interchangeable Preservation Format, and is the file format we use to preserve content, that is, (currently Amiga) floppy disk images. It’s naming is quite abstract for very good reasons:

• It is not meant just for the Commodore Amiga: The image format was designed to be used for anything, and as such, it is possible for any platform to have its media supported. In fact, some of the track formats used for Amiga Copy Protection are actually PC/Atari format anyway.
• It is not just for disks: Any type of digital media can be contained by the format. Currently it is used for disk images and ROM files, but in the future it may possibly be used for CDROMs and information contained in hardware “dongle” protections.
• The underlying file format has many similarities to the IFF (Interchangeable File Format) standard on the Amiga, which was a very forward-thinking format. The same techniques are used today in other file formats such as PNG.

File extensions are meant to be used to indicate the file type. Though it could be argued that the Amiga’s way of handling files is superior (by file contents, not just name), having an extension is now an accepted norm. Therefore, we use an extension that indicates file type, not what it is mostly used for. It is certainly not appropriate to incorporate the word Amiga or Disk into the name, since it may not have anything to do with either of those things.