Out of necessity, ad-hoc metadata formats appeared quite soon.
Say, you're connecting to BBS with A LOT of files. Unless you already know that "SEX459W.ZIP" and "SEX454.ZIP" are Windows and DOS versions of (fictitious) “Super Extractor 4.5”, you'll spend a lot of time figuring it out. People who pay no attention to file categories can also get intrigued without a cause. Therefore, full names and descriptions were stored in sidecar files, and were processed to form complete file listings (to download and study offline). Sometimes operators personally reviewed the software, adding interesting opinions about users who had it on their computers, sometimes those were simple excerpts from release notes.
In some cases, the metadata was automatically appended to archives (as standard comments). Later, in the era of Rich Formats, WinZip even allowed arbitrary HTML in ZIP comments, and automatically loaded them into IE frame instead of regular text box when opening such archive. Obviously, that novelty didn't last long.
Say, you're connecting to BBS with A LOT of files. Unless you already know that "SEX459W.ZIP" and "SEX454.ZIP" are Windows and DOS versions of (fictitious) “Super Extractor 4.5”, you'll spend a lot of time figuring it out. People who pay no attention to file categories can also get intrigued without a cause. Therefore, full names and descriptions were stored in sidecar files, and were processed to form complete file listings (to download and study offline). Sometimes operators personally reviewed the software, adding interesting opinions about users who had it on their computers, sometimes those were simple excerpts from release notes.
In some cases, the metadata was automatically appended to archives (as standard comments). Later, in the era of Rich Formats, WinZip even allowed arbitrary HTML in ZIP comments, and automatically loaded them into IE frame instead of regular text box when opening such archive. Obviously, that novelty didn't last long.