Choosing The Right File Format/Quick Guide

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[edit] Quick Guide to recommended formats

For an explanation of terminology read the section "Formats for storing electronic information".

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, Nvu, 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, kolourpaint	Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, 3DStudioMax, AutoCAD
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)