Chapter 11 - File management

File formats

The need for characteristics and uses of generic file formats

• A generic file format can be opened in suitable software on most platforms

• Some file types used by Microsoft Office, such as Excel spreadsheets (.xlsx), Word documents (.docx), and Access databases (.accdb) are not generic.

Generic file formats

Generic text files:

• Comma separated values

- .csv

- Takes data in the form of tables that could be used with a spreadsheet or database and saves it in text format, separating data items with commas.

• Text

- .txt

- A text file is not formatted and can be opened in any word processor.

• Rich text format

- .rtf

- A text file type that saves some of the formatting within the text.

Generic image files:

• Graphics interchange format

- .gif

- Stores still or moving images and is an efficient method of storing images and is an efficient method of storing images using a smaller file size

- Widely used in web pages

• Joint photographic expert group

- .jpg or sometimes .jpeg

- still images, but does not store moving images

- An efficient method of storing images using a smaller file size and is widely used in web pages

• Portable document format

- .pdf

- A document which has been converted into an image format

- Can contain clickable links and buttons, form fields, video, and audio

- Can protect a document to stop others from editing it

• Portable network graphics

- .png

- compresses graphics(images) files without any loss of image quality

Generic video files:

• Moving pictures experts group layer 4

- .mp4

- Not a single file format

- Multimedia container which is used for storing video files, still images, audio files, subtitles, etc.

Generic audio files:

• Moving pictures experts group layer 3

- .mp3

- compressed file format used for storing audio files

Cannot store still or moving images

Generic files used for website authoring

• Cascading Style Sheets

- .css

- A style sheet which is saved in cascading style sheet format and is attached to one or more web pages

• Hypertext Markup Language

- .htm or sometimes .html

- A text-based language used to create content that a web browser can display as a web page

Generic compressed files:

• Roshal archive

- .rar

- A container which can hold almost any file type in a compressed format

- Used to reduce the number of bytes

• Zip

- .zip

- A container which can hold almost any file type in a compressed format

- Used to reduce the number of bytes

- Save storage space or to reduce transmission time