Open format - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

An open file format
File format
A file format is a particular way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file.Since a disk drive, or indeed any computer storage, can store only bits, the computer must have some way of converting information to 0s and 1s and vice-versa. There are different kinds of formats for...

is a published specification for storing digital data

Data (computing)

In computer science, data is information in a form suitable for use with a computer. Data is often distinguished from programs. A program is a sequence of instructions that detail a task for the computer to perform...

, usually maintained by a standards organization

Standards organization

A standards organization, standards body, standards developing organization , or standards setting organization is any organization whose primary activities are developing, coordinating, promulgating, revising, amending, reissuing, interpreting, or otherwise producing technical standards that are...

, which can therefore be used and implemented by anyone. For example, an open format can be implementable by both proprietary

Proprietary software

Proprietary software is computer software licensed under exclusive legal right of the copyright holder. The licensee is given the right to use the software under certain conditions, while restricted from other uses, such as modification, further distribution, or reverse engineering.Complementary...

and free

Free software

Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...

and open source software, using the typical software licenses used by each. In contrast to open formats, closed formats are considered trade secrets. Open formats are also called free file formats if they are not encumbered by any copyrights, patents, trademarks or other restrictions (for example, if they are in the public domain

Public domain

Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...

) so that anyone may use it at no monetary cost for any desired purpose.

Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...

defines the criteria for open formats as follows:

The format is based on an underlying open standard
Open standard
An open standard is a standard that is publicly available and has various rights to use associated with it, and may also have various properties of how it was designed . There is no single definition and interpretations vary with usage....
The format is developed through a publicly visible, community driven process
The format is affirmed and maintained by a vendor-independent standards organization
Standards organization
A standards organization, standards body, standards developing organization , or standards setting organization is any organization whose primary activities are developing, coordinating, promulgating, revising, amending, reissuing, interpreting, or otherwise producing technical standards that are...
The format is fully documented and publicly available
The format does not contain proprietary extensions

US government

Within the framework of Open Government Initiative

Open Government Initiative

The Open Government Initiative is an effort by the administration of President of the United States Barack Obama to "creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government." . The directive starting this initiative was issued on January 20, 2009, Obama's first day in office.The philosophy of the...

, the federal government of the United States

Federal government of the United States

The federal government of the United States is the national government of the constitutional republic of fifty states that is the United States of America. The federal government comprises three distinct branches of government: a legislative, an executive and a judiciary. These branches and...

adopted the Open Government Directive, according to which: "An open format is one that is platform independent, machine readable, and made available to the public without restrictions that would impede the re-use of that information".

State of Minnesota

The State of Minnesota

Minnesota

Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...

defines the criteria for open, XML-based file formats as follows:

The format is interoperable among diverse internal and external platforms and applications
The format is fully published and available royalty-free
The format is implemented by multiple vendors
The format is controlled by an open industry organization with a well-defined inclusive process for evolution of the standard

Commonwealth of Massachusetts

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts

Massachusetts

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...

"defines open formats as specifications for data file formats that are based on an underlying open standard, developed by an open community, affirmed and maintained by a standards body and are fully documented and publicly available."

The Enterprise Technical Reference Model (ETRM) classifies four formats as "Open Formats":

OASIS Open Document Format For Office Applications (OpenDocument) v. 1.1
OpenDocument
The Open Document Format for Office Applications is an XML-based file format for representing electronic documents such as spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents....
Ecma-376 Office Open XML Formats (Open XML)
Hypertext Document Format v. 4.01
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
Plain Text Format
Plain text
In computing, plain text is the contents of an ordinary sequential file readable as textual material without much processing, usually opposed to formatted text....

The Linux Information Project

According to The Linux Information Project, the term open format should refer to "any format that is published for anyone to read and study but which may or may not be encumbered by patents, copyrights or other restrictions on use". - as opposed to a free format which is not encumbered by any copyrights, patents, trademarks or other restrictions

Multimedia

ALAC
Apple Lossless
Apple Lossless Apple Lossless Apple Lossless (also known as ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec), or ALE (Apple Lossless Encoder) is an audio codec developed by Apple Inc. for lossless data compression of digital music. After initially being proprietary for many years, in late 2011 Apple open sourced...

— lossless audio codec, previously a proprietary format of Apple Inc.
CMML — timed metadata and subtitles
DAISY Digital Talking Book
DAISY Digital Talking Book
DAISY is a standard for digital talking books. DAISY books are typically used by people have "print disabilities," including blindness, impaired vision, dyslexia...

— a talking book format
FLAC
FLAC
FLAC is a codec which allows digital audio to be losslessly compressed such that file size is reduced without any information being lost...

— lossless audio codec
JPEG 2000
JPEG 2000
JPEG 2000 is an image compression standard and coding system. It was created by the Joint Photographic Experts Group committee in 2000 with the intention of superseding their original discrete cosine transform-based JPEG standard with a newly designed, wavelet-based method...

— an image format standardized by ISO/IEC
Matroska (mkv)
Matroska
The Matroska Multimedia Container is an open standard free container format, a file format that can hold an unlimited number of video, audio, picture or subtitle tracks in one file. It is intended to serve as a universal format for storing common multimedia content, like movies or TV shows...

— container for all type of multimedia formats (audio, video, images, subtitles)
MNG — moving pictures, based on PNG
Musepack
Musepack
Musepack or MPC is an open source lossy audio codec, specifically optimized for transparent compression of stereo audio at bitrates of 160–180 kbit/s...

— an audio codec
Ogg
Ogg
Ogg is a free, open container format maintained by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The creators of the Ogg format state that it is unrestricted by software patents and is designed to provide for efficient streaming and manipulation of high quality digital multimedia.The Ogg container format can multiplex...

— container for Vorbis
Vorbis
Vorbis is a free software / open source project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation . The project produces an audio format specification and software implementation for lossy audio compression...

, FLAC
FLAC
FLAC is a codec which allows digital audio to be losslessly compressed such that file size is reduced without any information being lost...

, Speex
Speex
Speex is a patent-free audio compression format designed for speech and also a free software speech codec that may be used on VoIP applications and podcasts. It is based on the CELP speech coding algorithm. Speex claims to be free of any patent restrictions and is licensed under the revised BSD...

(audio formats) & Theora
Theora
Theora is a free lossy video compression format. It is developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation and distributed without licensing fees alongside their other free and open media projects, including the Vorbis audio format and the Ogg container....

(a video format)
PNG — a raster image format standardized by ISO/IEC
SMIL
Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language
SMIL , the Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language, is a W3C recommended XML markup language for describing multimedia presentations. It defines markup for timing, layout, animations, visual transitions, and media embedding, among other things...

— a media playlisting format and multimedia integration language
Speex
Speex
Speex is a patent-free audio compression format designed for speech and also a free software speech codec that may be used on VoIP applications and podcasts. It is based on the CELP speech coding algorithm. Speex claims to be free of any patent restrictions and is licensed under the revised BSD...

— speech codec
SVG
Scalable Vector Graphics
Scalable Vector Graphics is a family of specifications of an XML-based file format for describing two-dimensional vector graphics, both static and dynamic . The SVG specification is an open standard that has been under development by the World Wide Web Consortium since 1999.SVG images and their...

— a vector image format standardized by W3C
VRML
VRML
VRML is a standard file format for representing 3-dimensional interactive vector graphics, designed particularly with the World Wide Web in mind...

/X3D
X3D
X3D is the ISO standard XML-based file format for representing 3D computer graphics, the successor to the Virtual Reality Modeling Language . X3D features extensions to VRML X3D is the ISO standard XML-based file format for representing 3D computer graphics, the successor to the Virtual Reality...

— realtime 3D data formats standardized by ISO/IEC
WavPack
WavPack
WavPack is a free, open source lossless audio compression format developed by David Bryant.-Features:WavPack compression can compress 8-, 16-, 24-, and 32-bit fixed-point, and 32-bit floating point audio files in the .WAV file format. It also supports surround sound streams and high frequency...

— "Hybrid" (lossless/lossy) audio codec
WebM
WebM
WebM is an audio-video format designed to provide a royalty-free, open video compression format for use with HTML5 video. The project's development is sponsored by Google....

— a video/audio format
XSPF — a playlist format for multimedia

Text

ASCII
ASCII
The American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text...

— a plain text file
DVI
DVI (file format)
The Device independent file format is the output file format of the TeX typesetting program, designed by David R. Fuchs in 1979. Unlike the TeX markup files used to generate them, DVI files are not intended to be human-readable; they consist of binary data describing the visual layout of a...

— device independent (TeX)
ePub
EPUB
EPUB is a free and open e-book standard by the International Digital Publishing Forum...

— open e-book standard by the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF)
LaTeX
LaTeX
LaTeX is a document markup language and document preparation system for the TeX typesetting program. Within the typesetting system, its name is styled as . The term LaTeX refers only to the language in which documents are written, not to the editor used to write those documents. In order to...

— document markup language
Office Open XML — a formatted text format (ISO/IEC 29500:2008); see Licensing for details
OpenDocument
OpenDocument
The Open Document Format for Office Applications is an XML-based file format for representing electronic documents such as spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents....

— a formatted text format (ISO/IEC 26300:2006).
OpenXPS — open standard for a page description language and a fixed-document format
PDF
Portable Document Format
Portable Document Format is an open standard for document exchange. This file format, created by Adobe Systems in 1993, is used for representing documents in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems....

— open standard for documents exchange (ISO 15930-1:2001, ISO 19005-1:2005, ISO 32000-1:2008). PDF started out a proprietary standard, but was later submitted through standardization
PostScript
PostScript
PostScript is a dynamically typed concatenative programming language created by John Warnock and Charles Geschke in 1982. It is best known for its use as a page description language in the electronic and desktop publishing areas. Adobe PostScript 3 is also the worldwide printing and imaging...

— a page description language
Page description language
A page description language is a language that describes the appearance of a printed page in a higher level than an actual output bitmap. An overlapping term is printer control language, but it should not be confused as referring solely to Hewlett-Packard's PCL...

and programming language
Programming language
A programming language is an artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine and/or to express algorithms precisely....

. PostScript started out as a proprietary standard, but was later submitted through standardization
Rich Text Format
Rich Text Format
The Rich Text Format is a proprietary document file format with published specification developed by Microsoft Corporation since 1987 for Microsoft products and for cross-platform document interchange....

— a formatted text format (proprietary, published specification, defined and maintained only by Microsoft)
Unicode
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...

— a text character format
UTF-8
UTF-8
UTF-8 is a multibyte character encoding for Unicode. Like UTF-16 and UTF-32, UTF-8 can represent every character in the Unicode character set. Unlike them, it is backward-compatible with ASCII and avoids the complications of endianness and byte order marks...

— text encoding with support for all common languages and scripts

Archiving and compression

7z
7z
7z is a compressed archive file format that supports several different data compression, encryption and pre-processing algorithms. The 7z format initially appeared as implemented by the 7-Zip archiver. The 7-Zip program is publicly available under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public...

— for archiving and/or compression
bzip2
Bzip2
bzip2 is a free and open source implementation of the Burrows–Wheeler algorithm. It is developed and maintained by Julian Seward. Seward made the first public release of bzip2, version 0.15, in July 1996.-Compression efficiency:...

— for compression
gzip
Gzip
Gzip is any of several software applications used for file compression and decompression. The term usually refers to the GNU Project's implementation, "gzip" standing for GNU zip. It is based on the DEFLATE algorithm, which is a combination of Lempel-Ziv and Huffman coding...

— for compression
MAFF
Mozilla Archive Format
The Mozilla Archive Format is a web page archiving format provided by Firefox for saving one or more web pages together with its associated audio, video, and other related web resources in a single file. It is not the same as the MHTML file format, which uses MIME encoding to store all the...

— for web page archiving, based on ZIP
ZIP (file format)
Zip is a file format used for data compression and archiving. A zip file contains one or more files that have been compressed, to reduce file size, or stored as is...
PAQ
PAQ
PAQ is a series of lossless data compression archivers that have evolved through collaborative development to top rankings on several benchmarks measuring compression ratio . Specialized versions of PAQ have won the Hutter Prize and the Calgary Challenge...

— for compression
SQX
SQX
The SQX-Archiver is an open and free data compression and archival format. It can be used in one's own applications free of charge...

— for archiving and/or compression
tar
Tar (file format)
In computing, tar is both a file format and the name of a program used to handle such files...

— for archiving
xz
Xz
xz is a lossless data compression file format incorporating the LZMA2 compression algorithm. Like gzip and bzip2, concatenation is supported to compress multiple files, but the convention is to bundle a file that is an archive itself, such as those created by the tar or cpio Unix...

— for compression
ZIP
ZIP (file format)
Zip is a file format used for data compression and archiving. A zip file contains one or more files that have been compressed, to reduce file size, or stored as is...

— for archiving and/or compression; the base format is in the public domain, but newer versions have some patented features

Other

CSS
Cascading Style Sheets
Cascading Style Sheets is a style sheet language used to describe the presentation semantics of a document written in a markup language...

— style sheet format usually used with (X)HTML, standardized by W3C
CSV
Comma-separated values
A comma-separated values file stores tabular data in plain-text form. As a result, such a file is easily human-readable ....

— comma separated values, commonly used for spreadsheets or simple databases
DjVu
DjVu
DjVu is a computer file format designed primarily to store scanned documents, especially those containing a combination of text, line drawings, and photographs. It uses technologies such as image layer separation of text and background/images, progressive loading, arithmetic coding, and lossy...

— file format for scanned images or documents
EAS3
EAS3
EAS3 is a software toolkit for reading and writing structured binary data with geometry information and for postprocessing of these data. It is meant to exchange floating-point data according to IEEE standard between different computers, to modify them or to convert them into other file formats....

— binary file format for floating point
Floating point
In computing, floating point describes a method of representing real numbers in a way that can support a wide range of values. Numbers are, in general, represented approximately to a fixed number of significant digits and scaled using an exponent. The base for the scaling is normally 2, 10 or 16...

data
ELF
Executable and Linkable Format
In computing, the Executable and Linkable Format is a common standard file format for executables, object code, shared libraries, and core dumps. First published in the System V Application Binary Interface specification, and later in the Tool Interface Standard, it was quickly accepted among...

— Executable and Linkable Format
FreeOTFE
FreeOTFE
FreeOTFE is an open source on-the-fly disk encryption computer program for PCs running Microsoft Windows, and personal digital assistants running Windows Mobile . It creates virtual drives, or disks, to which anything written is automatically encrypted before being stored on a computer's hard or...

— container for encrypted data
Hierarchical Data Format
Hierarchical Data Format
Hierarchical Data Format is the name of a set of file formats and libraries designed to store and organize large amounts of numerical data...

— multi-platform data format for storing multidimensional arrays, among other data structures
HTML
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....

/XHTML
XHTML
XHTML is a family of XML markup languages that mirror or extend versions of the widely-used Hypertext Markup Language , the language in which web pages are written....

— markup language
Markup language
A markup language is a modern system for annotating a text in a way that is syntactically distinguishable from that text. The idea and terminology evolved from the "marking up" of manuscripts, i.e. the revision instructions by editors, traditionally written with a blue pencil on authors' manuscripts...

for web page
Web page
A web page or webpage is a document or information resource that is suitable for the World Wide Web and can be accessed through a web browser and displayed on a monitor or mobile device. This information is usually in HTML or XHTML format, and may provide navigation to other web pages via hypertext...

s (ISO/IEC 15445:2000)
iCalendar
ICalendar
iCalendar is a computer file format which allows Internet users to send meeting requests and tasks to other Internet users, via email, or sharing files with an extension of .ics...

— calendar data format
JSON
JSON
JSON , or JavaScript Object Notation, is a lightweight text-based open standard designed for human-readable data interchange. It is derived from the JavaScript scripting language for representing simple data structures and associative arrays, called objects...

— object notation, subset of YAML and correct ECMAScript
ECMAScript
ECMAScript is the scripting language standardized by Ecma International in the ECMA-262 specification and ISO/IEC 16262. The language is widely used for client-side scripting on the web, in the form of several well-known dialects such as JavaScript, JScript, and ActionScript.- History :JavaScript...

statement
LTFS — Linear Tape File System
NetCDF
NetCDF
NetCDF is a set of software libraries and self-describing, machine-independent data formats that support the creation, access, and sharing of array-oriented scientific data. The project homepage is hosted by the Unidata program at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research...

— for scientific data
NZB
NZB
NZB is an XML-based file format for retrieving posts from NNTP servers. The format was conceived by the developers of the Newzbin.com Usenet Index. NZB is effective when used with search-capable websites. These websites create NZB files out of what is needed to be downloaded...

— for multipart binary files on Usenet
Usenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...
PHP
PHP
PHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document...

— scripting
Scripting language
A scripting language, script language, or extension language is a programming language that allows control of one or more applications. "Scripts" are distinct from the core code of the application, as they are usually written in a different language and are often created or at least modified by the...

and markup language
Markup language
A markup language is a modern system for annotating a text in a way that is syntactically distinguishable from that text. The idea and terminology evolved from the "marking up" of manuscripts, i.e. the revision instructions by editors, traditionally written with a blue pencil on authors' manuscripts...

for web development
Web development
Web development is a broad term for the work involved in developing a web site for the Internet or an intranet . This can include web design, web content development, client liaison, client-side/server-side scripting, web server and network security configuration, and e-commerce development...
RSS
RSS
-Mathematics:* Root-sum-square, the square root of the sum of the squares of the elements of a data set* Residual sum of squares in statistics-Technology:* RSS , "Really Simple Syndication" or "Rich Site Summary", a family of web feed formats...

— syndication
SDXF
SDXF
SDXF is a data serialization format defined by RFC 3072.It allows arbitrary structured data of different types to be assembled together for exchanging between computers of different architectures....

— the Structured Data eXchange Format
SFV — checksum format
TrueCrypt
TrueCrypt
TrueCrypt is a software application used for on-the-fly encryption . It is free and open source. It can create a virtual encrypted disk within a file or encrypt a partition or the entire storage device .- Operating systems :TrueCrypt supports Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and...

— container for encrypted data
WebDAV
WebDAV
Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning is a set of methods based on the Hypertext Transfer Protocol that facilitates collaboration between users in editing and managing documents and files stored on World Wide Web servers...

— Internet filesystem format
XML
Extensible Markup Language
Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....

— a general-purpose markup language
Markup language
A markup language is a modern system for annotating a text in a way that is syntactically distinguishable from that text. The idea and terminology evolved from the "marking up" of manuscripts, i.e. the revision instructions by editors, traditionally written with a blue pencil on authors' manuscripts...

, standardized by W3C
YAML
YAML
YAML is a human-readable data serialization format that takes concepts from programming languages such as C, Perl, and Python, and ideas from XML and the data format of electronic mail . YAML was first proposed by Clark Evans in 2001, who designed it together with Ingy döt Net and Oren Ben-Kiki...

— human readable data serialization format

External links

OpenFormats
Practical Advice for using Free Formats from Ubuntu Community Documentation
Study on the: Economic impact of open source software on innovation and the competitiveness of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) sector in the EU, 2006 EU report in favor of adopting open source software
Free File Format Definition
Definition of Free Cultural Works

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.