Computer help: Poll: What digital file format would you use?
- 5/1/09 1:52 PM
Poll: What digital file format would you use?
by Lee Koo (ADMIN) - 5/1/09 1:52 PM
If you had only one choice of digital file format to preserve your important text documents for the future, what would you use?
.ascii (ASCII text file) (Why?)
.doc (Microsoft Word document) (Why?)
.docx (Microsoft Word Open XML document) (Why?)
.pdf (Portable Document Format file) (Why?)
.rtf (Rich Text Format file) (Why?)
.txt (Plain Text file) (Why?)
Never digital--I would use paper. (Why?)
Other (What is it and why?)
What about for digital photos?
.bmp (bitmap image file) (Why?)
.gif (Graphical Interchange Format file) (Why?)
.jpg or .jpeg (Joint Photographic Experts Group image file) (Why?)
.png (Portable Network Graphic) (Why?)
.pdf (Portable Document Format file) (Why?)
.raw (raw image data file) (Why?)
.tif of .tiff (Tagged Image File) (Why?)
Never digital--I would use photo paper. (Why?)
Other (What is it and why?)
Text...
by mwooge - 5/1/09 6:31 PM In reply to: Poll: What digital file format would you use? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I'd want text saved as text or ascii. That way any errors that crept in would confine itself to a single character.
Pictures...
by mwooge - 5/1/09 6:33 PM In reply to: Poll: What digital file format would you use? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
For pictures, save as bitmaps. With compressed files, one corrupted bit and all the rest of the image is unrecoverable.
Where's ODF?
by anime4christ - 5/1/09 6:48 PM In reply to: Poll: What digital file format would you use? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
How come ODF (Open Document Format; used by OpenOffice.org and many other programs) isn't on the list? It is definately used by more applications than MSOXML.
XML and UUENCODE
by Zouch - 5/1/09 7:29 PM In reply to: Poll: What digital file format would you use? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
For text fies and other such documents, the standardized format would be XML. It is an international standard and is cross platform.
Images are harder. If you want to store them as images, I'd use TIF, a lossless compressed format. You could maybe convert to RAW format, which is pretty universal but has very big files. An alternative is to UUencode the images, which converts them to ASCII text. But remember to keep a copy of the corresponding UUdecode utility with them and keep updating it for current systems or set up a bootable UUdecode system on some kind of removable device (CD, USB Flash, etc.).
Depends really.
by FrankQC - 5/1/09 8:14 PM In reply to: Poll: What digital file format would you use? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Windows: doc and txt
Linux: doc and txt
Windows: jpg
Linux: png
Why png in Linux and not Windows? For me png is the default format for pictures whereas Windows is jpeg (for me).
Doc and txt because both Linux and Windows can read 'em easily.
The Safest Options
by 2dogday - 5/1/09 8:32 PM In reply to: Poll: What digital file format would you use? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Obviously, film photos last longer. I use both film and digital cameras and have found that by comparison, my film photos are sharper and look better than printed-out digitals. Digitals, however, look great on computer screens. I've been using high grade (thicker)CDs for transfering my digitals, and am confident that if MS goes broke and everyone uses some other type of OS; there will always be entrepreneurs (just as there are now selling vinyl record players)who will be selling transfer programs from the "old MS" to the latest hot-shot system twenty years from now.
Having said that, I also use another option. I've been turning off the flash settings on digital and/or film cameras and taking pictures of photos that are on my computer screen. If you are careful, and adjust the size of your onscreen photos to fit the camera's aperture, the result of the photo is a near perfect image. That way, instead of using a scanner and printing out digitals that only look so-so, you'll have great film photos of them that will last for ages.
Pictures instead of scans.
by mwooge - 5/1/09 8:56 PM In reply to: The Safest Options by 2dogdayI take pictures of the glass negatives I get, and of some of my magic lantern slides. I use a backlight and "milky white" (transluscent) plastic.
Archival file formats
by GFW - 5/1/09 10:41 PM In reply to: Poll: What digital file format would you use? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I think the most important thing for future-proofing is to be as platform-independent as possible.
I know people thing that MicroSoft will be here forever, but anyone with old Word or PowerPoint files will discover that MS abandons old file formats over and over. Same with Apple - many of my MacDraw files can't be opened with anything I have.
While Apple will open all JPEG I have come across, I can't say the same for Windows. PowerPoint documents made with JPEGs on a Mac will often open in Windows with graphics missing. The most likely to work across multiple platforms are PDF files and PNG files. This can be* a nuisance, as PNG files don't work in many DVD players that are set up display JPEG photos, but at least they work in most programs on both Apple and Windows.
I would say PDF, if you are worried about the long-run. PDF's are supported by PC's and Mac's, as well as by SmartPhones, Blackberries and iPhones; and not to mention portable readers, like the Sony eReader or Amazon's Kindle. It seems to be like the format that will be around the longest and Adobe does a good job at supporting their stuff.
There's always Adobe for images
by ESUNintel - 5/1/09 11:20 PM In reply to: Poll: What digital file format would you use? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I would say jpg. I don't think the way one saves images is such a big deal, since you can easily convert them to other formats by using software like PhotoShop or Gimp. As long as Adobe exists, we shouldn't have a crisis.
Go generic
by jcoons - 5/2/09 4:21 AM In reply to: Poll: What digital file format would you use? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
A plain text file (.txt) can be read or imported into almost any application that deals with readable text. Plain text may even be retrieved off of corrupted media. Compact and portable, my vote is for plain text.
Why no ODF?
by generic - 5/2/09 7:52 AM In reply to: Poll: What digital file format would you use? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I chose "Other" for text documents because I would have chosen OpenDocument. I don't know why you didn't mention ODF because future proofing is what the format was designed for! PDF would have been my second choice, as when I send a document to someone I will send them a PDF.
As for images I chose PNG. While JPEG is the most popular and good enough in terms of the quality to filesize ratio, it is still a lossy format while PNG is lossless. Storage capacity and data transfer speeds are becoming non-issues even today, let alone in 10 or 20 years time.
In either case, paper hard copies and photos can be damaged and will deteriorate over time, just look at your grandparent's photos. I'll be damned if when I'm old and grey kids will say "Your time looks so drab and boring" 
.
Text Documents
by Phil Somerset - 5/2/09 8:47 AM In reply to: Poll: What digital file format would you use? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Of the choices you have given, I would choose .rtf. It's a relatively stable, non-proprietary format that is readable by all current word processing packages. It's safe to assume that it would also be readable by future WP packages. It's considered a lingua franca and last resort for cross-platform exchanges of WP files.
docx and png
by thljcl - 5/2/09 8:58 AM In reply to: Poll: What digital file format would you use? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
The use of docx let me take advantage of various unique features. PNG is a kind of loseless format with quite a good compressibility.
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