References
References
35. References
35.1 Prior Art
- unfinnigan (Gene Selkov, 2010-2012): Perl/Python reverse-engineering project. The most comprehensive prior binary format analysis. Supports versions 57, 62, 63, 64, 66. Source: https://github.com/prvst/unfinnigan
35.2 Key Observations
- Most existing open-source readers (apart from unfinnigan) wrap Thermo's RawFileReader .NET library; this specification documents the on-disk format directly so independent implementations are easier to build.
- The file format has remained stable at version 66 since ~2015, covering all current instruments from Orbitrap Fusion through Orbitrap Astral.
- The format is backwards-compatible: version 66 files retain defunct 32-bit address fields for tools that may not support 64-bit addressing.
35.3 Validation Corpus
This specification was validated against 6 real-world RAW files from PRIDE Archive covering diverse instruments:
| Project | Instrument | Version |
|---|---|---|
| PXD000790 | LTQ Orbitrap Elite | 66 |
| PXD006060 | Orbitrap Fusion | 66 |
| PXD006062 | Orbitrap Fusion Lumos | 66 |
| PXD021648 | Q Exactive HF | 66 |
| PXD039587 | LTQ | 66 |
| PXD043983 | LTQ Orbitrap | 66 |
All header structures (FileHeader through RawFileInfo) parsed and validated successfully with consistent field alignments and sensible values across all samples.