What Document Files Do You Use?

[Michigan Swamp Buck]

. . . TXT UTF-8 standard encoding and PDF/A. UTF-8 preserves characer encoding such as thouse weird characters like the umlaut, accents, and non-latin characters. Textpad or Notepad++ are the best editors, imo.

PDF/A compliant (/A stands for archive) is an ISO standard for the permanent archiving of formatted documents and should be readable for longer than more conventional PDF formats. PDF/A differs from PDF where PDF/A files are self-contained which elminates the common problem with garbled layout and missing characters. Data I know I'm not going to edit or very rarely I save into PDF/A files.

The long-term readability of the PDF/A format is achieved by dispensing with certain functions and embedding all fonts in the file. A PDF/A file is recognizable by the blue bar in Adobe Reader. By default it will open as READ ONLY until you enable editing.

. . .usually go with .TIFF (for lossless image archiving) as it supports the CMYK color model for printing. I rarely ever use TIFF and the downside is you need massive amounts of storage space that make it cost prohibitive. Go with PNG.

BMP is bloated proprietary crap and never had a good use for it. Might as well use PNG for lossless image compression with less space consuming plus it is an established open file format, developed by the PNG Working Group.

I used to use Tiff all the time for printed images I jobbed out to the printer, and I used it for archived material like you stated. Most recently I scanned a stereoscope photo card collection as Tiffs for printing as reproductions.

The most popular image file type in use is PNG, with a usage rate of 82.1% of all websites.

So, to summarize, UTF-8 Text format, PNG for decent images, and PDF/A compliant for documents.

Now, what about universal vector graphics? SVG is strictly graphics while EPS can include text. Also it is the most popular, so SVG is choice. We haven't even gotten into media like audio and video. WAV and MPEG for audio and video? Keep in mind, we are talking what will persist for archiving and is cross platform. Files we could use for any app on any system now or in foreseeable the future.