Document file format

Article summary

A document file format is a text or binary file format for storing documents on a storage media, especially for use by computers. There currently exists a multitude of incompatible document file formats. Examples of XML-based open standards are the ISO/IEC standards OpenDocument (ISO 26300:2006) and the Strict and Transitional versions of Office Open XML (ISO 29500:2008). Another example is DocBook which is used for writing structured documentation such as manuals, books, technical guides, and then processed with stylesheets/toolchains to generate HTML, PDF, EPUB, man pages, etc. XHTML, an earlier document file format over time became part of HTML5. In 1993, the ITU-T tried to establish a standard for document file formats, known as the Open Document Architecture (ODA) which was supposed to replace all competing document file formats. It is described in ITU-T documents T.411 through T.421, which are equivalent to ISO 8613. It did not succeed. Page description languages such as PostScript and PDF have become the de facto standard for documents that a typical user should only be able to create and read, not edit. In 2001, a series of ISO/IEC standards for PDF began to be published, including the specification for PDF itself, ISO-32000. HTML is the most used and open international standard and it is also used as document file format.…

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