In computing, ADFS stands for the Advanced Disc Filing System. It is peculiar to the Acorn computer range, although a Linux filesystem exists to read filesystems in this format.
Acorn's original DFS was a ROM for the BBC Micro. It has an extremely limited design in order to make best use of the 100k floppy discs it was originally designed for. It uses a flat directory structure with one letter to represent the current directory ($ by default). Changing directory meant using a different letter as the prefix. You could refer to a file in a different directory by prefixing it with the letter and a dot, eg "A.LETTER". Names could be up to 7 letters long, plus one letter for the directory. The file table was one disc sector, limiting the number of files on the disc to 31.
Other companies, including Watford Electronics sold their own replacement DFS. They typically added extensions, such as permitting two sectors to be used for the directory, increasing the maximum number of files to 62.
The most dramatic change in the Advanced Disc Filing System, initially introduced for the BBC Master was the hierarchical structure. The filename length expanded from 7 to 10 letters and the number of files in a directory expanded to 77. It retained some superficial attributes from DFS; the directory separator continued to be a dot and $ now indicated the hierarchical root of the filesystem. ^ was used to refer to the parent directory and was the previously visited directory. It supported 3.5" floppy discs, formatted up to 640k capacity.
Later, RISC OS would add a per-file "type" attribute; 12 bits of type information that was used to denote the contents or intended use of a file. This can be thought of as being similar to Apple's resource forks, only with much less information. Later editions of ADFS supported 800k double density floppies, and 1600k high density floppies. It was also used as the hard disc filesystem on the Acorn Archimedes and Risc PC models.
ADFs are a new digital representation of shape with several advantages over existing approaches.
Technical Discussion: A distance field is a scalar field that specifies a distance to a shape, where the distance may be signed to distinguish between the inside and outside of the shape.
ADFs consist of adaptively sampled distance values, organized in a spatial data structure, with a method for reconstructing the distance field from the sampled distance values.
No matter what shade an ADF is, they all have a light whitish coloring on the front of their bodies, though you might see shades of pink along the frontal areas of their limbs and body areas.
ADFs have no eyelids, so it's difficult to determine if they are awake or in that resting mode as they always seem to have that look of total surprise on their faces.
If your ADF is having problems submerging, perhaps bouncing like a cork at the water’s surface, this could be as a result of constipation or blockage of the intestinal tract from overeating or from a diet of freeze dried or dry pelleted foods with air trapped in the gut.