File Formats

One of the very confusing aspects of using computers is a lack of standards, and file formats.  In some instances a default format has risen because of the monopolistic tendencies of some companies, and the one that comes to everyone’s mind in the first instance is Microsoft.  That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, although it does stifle development so getting the balance right is tricky indeed.

For written documents, the Word format (.doc) has become pretty much the default, although even that is under threat from the very organisation that established it as a household name, and with the release of Office 07, the format .docx has reared its head.

The very basic format for text, without any significant formatting is .txt and this makes this format quite universal – most programs at least know what this sort of file is and how to deal with it.  The next one up the scale is .rtf – Rich Text Format.  This then allows more complex formatting, different fonts, bold, italic etc, and still is pretty transferable from system to system and program to program.  From that point, formats spring up all over the place.  .doc, .docx, .odt (open document text format – for OpenOffice – a free alternative to Microsoft Word) and so on.  There are over 60 different document formats, but obviously very few are in common use today.

The same ‘problem’ exists for spreadsheets, databases, images, videos, sound and on and on.  For the average user, the whole issue is very confusing which is no surprise.  We will slowly weave our way through the different types, and formats, and hopefully you will start to get a feeling for all these 3 (and now more) letter suffixes that follow the file names.

Not to preempt the future articles, but these are some that you will (hopefully) become more conversant with:

.doc .txt .rtf .xls .jpg .pdf .dng .avi .mov .mp3 .mp4 .m4a .m4v .jpg .gif .tif .html

I could go on (and on) for a while – this is not a comprehensive list, nor even in order of importance.  Once you have a bit of a handle on this, it will all become just a little bit clearer.

One of the benefits of this will be not only understanding that there are different file formats, and their uses, but also the fact that it is possible to convert a file from one format to another.  For example, taking a file from a strange, or less used format and changing it into a more common format that you can then work with.