File Formats

“A file manager or file browser is a computer program that provides a user interface to manage files and folders. The most common operations performed on files or groups of files include creating, opening (e.g. viewing, playing, editing or printing), renaming, copying, moving, deleting and searching for files, as well as modifying file attributes, properties and file permissions. Folders and files may be displayed in a hierarchical tree based on their directory structure” (Wikipedia)

• Examples: Finder (Mac), File Explorer (Windows)

“A filename extension, file name extension or file extension is a suffix to the name of a computer file (e.g., .txt, .docx, .md). The extension indicates a characteristic of the file contents or its intended use. A filename extension is typically delimited from the rest of the filename with a full stop (period)” (Wikipedia)

“We will say that a file format is proprietary if the mode of presentation of its data is opaque and its specification is not publicly available. Proprietary formats are developed by software companies in order to encode data produced by their applications: only the software produced by a company who owns the specification of a file format will be able to read correctly and completely the data contained in this file. Proprietary formats can be further protected through the use of patents and the owner of the patent can ask royalties for the use or implementation of the formats in third-party’s software” (OpenFormats.org)

• Common proprietary formats include:

  • PDF (Adobe Portable Document Format)

  • DOCX (Microsoft Word Document)

  • XLSX (Microsoft Excel Document)

"We will say that a file format is open if the mode of presentation of its data is transparent and/or its specification is publicly available. Open formats are ordinarily standards fixed by public authorities or international institutions whose aim is to establish norms for software interoperability. There are nevertheless cases of open formats promoted by software companies which choose to make the specification of the formats used by their products publicly available…an open format can either be coded in a transparent way (readable in any text editor) or in a binary mode (unreadable in a text editor but thoroughly decodable once the format specifications are known)” (OpenFormats.org)

• Common open formats include:

  • TXT (plain-text)

  • CSV (comma-separated value)

  • HTML (hyper-text markup language)

  • PNG (portable network graphic)