G-file N. [Commodore BBS Culture] Any File That Is Written With The Intention Of Being Read By A Human Rather Than A Machine

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g-file n.

[Commodore BBS culture] Any file that is written
with the intention of being read by a human rather than a machine,
such as the Jargon File, documentation, humor files, hacker lore,
and technical materials.

This term survives from the nearly forgotten Commodore 64
underground and BBS community. In the early 80s, C-Net had emerged
as the most popular C64 BBS software for systems which encouraged
messaging (as opposed to file transfer). There were three main
options for files: Program files (p-files), which served the same
function as `doors' in today's systems, UD files (the user
upload/download section), and g-files. Anything that was meant to
be read was included in g-files.

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