Joliet
More info
- Creator
- Microsoft
- Released
- 1995
- Type
- Filesystem extension
Microsoft's 1995 extension to ISO 9660 that gave CDs long, Unicode-encoded filenames.
ISO 9660 capped filenames at eight characters plus a three-letter extension, in uppercase — a leftover from MS-DOS. In 1995 Joliet bolted on a parallel directory tree with names up to 64 UCS-2 (Unicode) characters, without breaking older systems that only saw the short form.
The name follows a running joke at Microsoft: like Rock Ridge, it comes from a film — Joliet, Illinois, where Jake did time in The Blues Brothers. Nearly every Windows-burned CD from the late 1990s carries a Joliet tree.