Rainbow Books

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Illustration depicting each format by color. Rainbow Book formats.svg
Illustration depicting each format by color.

The Rainbow Books are a collection of CD format specifications generally written and published by standards bodies including the ISO, IEC, and ECMA.

Contents

Red Book (1980)

Yellow Book (1983)

Green Book (1986)

Orange Book (1990)

Orange is a reference to the fact that red and yellow mix to orange. This correlates with the fact that CD-R and CD-RW are capable of audio ("Red") and data ("Yellow"); although other colors (other CD standards) that do not mix are capable of being burned onto the physical medium. Orange Book also introduced the standard for multisession writing.

Beige Book (1992)

White Book (1993)

Blue Book (1995)

Scarlet Book (1999)

Scarlet color of this book is a reference to the Red Book, which defines original CDDA.

Purple Book (2000)

See also

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References

  1. "InfoWorld Vol. 16, No. 23". InfoWorld. June 6, 1994. p. 88. Retrieved March 25, 2020.
  2. "Proceedings of the 5th Annual Federal Depository Library Conference". U.S. Government Printing Office. April 15–18, 1996. p. 11. Retrieved February 10, 2022.
  3. ISO (1995). "ISO/IEC 10149:1995 – Information technology – Data interchange on read-only 120 mm optical data disks (CD-ROM)". Archived from the original on 2019-01-15. Retrieved 2010-08-06.
  4. "Data Interchange on Read-only 120 mm Optical Data Disks (CD-ROM)" (PDF). ECMA. June 1996. Retrieved 2023-12-31.