6.2. Portable Application Description (PAD) format.

Portable Application Description (PAD) is a machine-readable document format designed by Association of Shareware Professionals. It allows software authors to provide product descriptions and specifications to online sources in a standard way, using a simple XML schema that allows webmasters and program librarians to automate program listings. PAD files most commonly have .XML or .PAD file name extension..

Regularly updated PAD files are published by thousands of software information services and software catalogs
The ASP organization maintains PAD repository with more then 200,000 constantly updated software descriptors.

Additionally PAD files can be found in the following repositories.

  1. http://www.qarchive.org/repository/
  2. http://repository.appvisor.com/

A standard PAD file may include the following information about an application

  1. Application Name and Version
  2. Supported platforms
  3. Publisher Name
  4. Download links
  5. Type of license and EULA