Fresh start for lost file formats

Long lost file formats could soon be resurrected by pan-European research.

The 4.02m euro (£3.58m) project aims to create a universal emulator that can open and play obsolete file formats.

Using the emulator, researchers hope to ensure that digital materials such as games, websites and multimedia documents and are not lost for good.

The emulator will also be regularly updated to ensure that formats that fall out of favour remain supported in the near and far future.

Called Keeping Emulation Environments Portable (Keep), the project aims to create software that can recognise, play and open all types of computer file from the 1970s onwards.

As well as basic text documents it will also let people load up and play old computer games that technology has left behind.

"People don't think twice about saving files digitally - from snapshots taken on a camera phone to national or regional archives," said Dr Janet Delve, a computer historian from the University of Portsmouth and one of the research partners on Keep.