Standard Architecture for Universal Comment Extensions or ''SAUCE'', as it is most commonly known, is an open metadata protocol for tagging and describing

ASCII ASCII ( ), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Because ...

text files and other files, most of which generally center on or date back to the era of BBSing. SAUCE is very similar in nature to the

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Orig ...

ID3 tag format created in 1996 in that it carries metadata such as the title, author (artist), organization (group), as well as specific hierarchical datatype information depending on what type of file it is describing. The SAUCE protocol was invented and developed by the Belgian programmer known by the

pseudonym A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person or group assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true name (orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individua ...

''Tasmaniac'' of ACiD, who later went on to create the

XBin XBin, or ''eXtended Binary'', is a file format for saving IBM PC text mode images. Essentially an extension to the normal raw-image BIN (raw memory copy of text mode video memory) files, it provides an enhanced means for saving console graphics ...

image format, in 1994, two years before ID3 was established. The first utility created to add SAUCE descriptions to files was named ''SPOON''.

References

Metadata {{compu-stub