| Data Type
|
Preferred formats
|
Common OpenSource applications
|
Common proprietary applications
|
| Documents
|
- Plain text, encoded with either ASCII (limited to the English alphabet) or Unicode UTF-8
- RTF (Rich Text Format) - Proprietary, open specification by Microsoft
- PDF (Portable Document Format) - Proprietary, open specification by Adobe
- EPS (Encapsulated Post Script) - Proprietary, open specification by Adobe
- OOXML aka DOCX (Office Open XML) - controversially non-proprietary, open specification by Ecma International and ISO/IEC
- ODF (OpenDocument Format) - non-proprietary, open specification by OASIS and ISO
|
Notepad++, gedit, kate, AbiWord, OpenOffice.org Writer, KWord, PDFCreator, Geany, vim, emacs
|
Notepad, Adobe Acrobat, Corel WordPerfect, Microsoft Word, Star Office
|
| Spreadsheets
|
- ODS (OpenDocument Spreadsheet) - non-proprietary, open specification by OASIS and ISO
- OOXML aka XLSX (Office Open XML) - controversially non-proprietary, open specification by Ecma International and ISO/IEC
- CSV (Comma Separated Values) - Non-standard conventional format where a comma is used to separate each value
|
OpenOffice.org Calc, Lotus 1-2-3, Gnumeric, KSpread
|
Microsoft Excel, Corel Quattro Pro
|
| Web pages
|
- HTML (HyperText Markup Language) or XML (eXtensible Markup Language) - Non-proprietary, open specifications by W3C
|
Abiword, OpenOffice2.0, Mozilla composer, Quanta, Geany
|
Dreamweaver, Adobe GoLive
|
| Graphics (raster & vector)
|
- PNG (Portable Network Graphic) - non-proprietary, open specification. Released as ISO/IEC 15948:2003 and W3C recommendation (ref)
- JPEG/JPG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) Non-proprietary, open specification by the Joint Photographic Experts Group
- DjVuLibre (pronounced "déjà vu") Non-proprietary, open specification by lizardtech
- CGM (Computer Graphics Metafile) - Non-proprietary, open specification by ISO/IEC
- SVG (Scalable Vector Graphic) - Non-proprietary, open specification by W3C
- VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language) - Non-proprietary, open specification by W3C
- DXF (Drawing eXchange Format) - Proprietary, partially open specification by Autodesk
|
Gimp, TuxPaint, OpenOffice.org Draw, Blender, Inkscape, krita, kolourpaint
|
Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, 3DStudioMax, AutoCAD
|
| Audio
|
Audio has containers with codecs in together they form a format.
- Ogg container with vorbis, flac, speex and others
- Flac container with flac audio.
- MP3 Can contain mp3 audio.
|
Audacity, Ardour
|
Adobe Soundbooth
|
| Video
|
Video also has containers with codecs in together they form a format.
- Ogg container with Theora
- WebM container with VP8 video compression format and vorbis audio compression format
- MP4 container with h.264 video compression format and mp3 audio compression format
|
Openshot , KDEnlive
|
Adobe Premiere , Windows Movie Maker
|
| Database
|
Databases do not use files in the normal sense, however a good database can output its content structured with SQL (Structured Query Language) - an ANSI/ISO standard. It is also important that it supports ODBC (Open Data Base Connectivity)
|
PostgreSQL, MySQL, Firebird and InterBase, Kexi
|
Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle and Sybase
|
| Encrypted files
|
- OpenPGP - Non-proprietary, open specification, OpenSSL
|
GnuPG (GNU Privacy Guard)
|
PGP (Pretty Good Privacy)
|
