Native and foreign format

Last updated

A native format, in the context of software applications, refers to the file format which the application is designed to work with. It captures the internal reality of the program as well as is possible. Most likely this is also the default format of the application. A native file format therefore most likely has a one to one relationship with the applications features. In turn, a foreign format is not a true reflection of application internals, even though it may be supported by an application. To read a foreign file causes translation of data, this can cause data loss and further editing may prevent faithful writing back to the foreign format. [1] [2]

Example

A document writer application may support a multitude of files, ranging from simple text files that only store characters and not font faces or sizes, to complex documents containing text effects and images. However, when these text files or documents are opened, they are not necessarily edited in their original format.

Instead, the document writer may first convert the file into its own native data structure. Once the file is done being edited, the application will then convert the file back to its original format.

In some cases, applications may be able to open (import) files, but not save (export) them in the same format. This may be due to licensing issues, or simply because the feature has not been implemented in the application's programming yet. However, the application will typically be able to save the document in its own native format or any of the other foreign formats it is programmed to export.

For example, Microsoft Office Word 2003 is able to open Windows Write (*.wri) files, but cannot save them. Instead it is able to save them in its native Word Document (*.doc) format or a number of other common formats.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Microsoft Word</span> Word processor developed by Microsoft

Microsoft Word is a word processor developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms including: IBM PCs running DOS (1983), Apple Macintosh running the Classic Mac OS (1985), AT&T UNIX PC (1985), Atari ST (1988), OS/2 (1989), Microsoft Windows (1989), SCO Unix (1990), macOS (2001), Web browsers (2010), iOS (2014) and Android (2015). Using Wine, versions of Microsoft Word before 2013 can be run on Linux.

The Rich Text Format is a proprietary document file format with published specification developed by Microsoft Corporation from 1987 until 2008 for cross-platform document interchange with Microsoft products. Prior to 2008, Microsoft published updated specifications for RTF with major revisions of Microsoft Word and Office versions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Text editor</span> Computer software used to edit plain text documents

A text editor is a type of computer program that edits plain text. Such programs are sometimes known as "notepad" software. Text editors are provided with operating systems and software development packages, and can be used to change files such as configuration files, documentation files and programming language source code.

A translation memory (TM) is a database that stores "segments", which can be sentences, paragraphs or sentence-like units that have previously been translated, in order to aid human translators. The translation memory stores the source text and its corresponding translation in language pairs called “translation units”. Individual words are handled by terminology bases and are not within the domain of TM.

Object Linking & Embedding (OLE) is a proprietary technology developed by Microsoft that allows embedding and linking to documents and other objects. For developers, it brought OLE Control Extension (OCX), a way to develop and use custom user interface elements. On a technical level, an OLE object is any object that implements the IOleObject interface, possibly along with a wide range of other interfaces, depending on the object's needs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Comma-separated values</span> File format used to store data

Comma-separated values (CSV) is a text file format that uses commas to separate values. A CSV file stores tabular data in plain text, where each line of the file typically represents one data record. Each record consists of the same number of fields, and these are separated by commas in the CSV file. If the field delimiter itself may appear within a field, fields can be surrounded with quotation marks.

XCF, short for eXperimental Computing Facility, is the native image format of the GIMP image-editing program. It saves all of the data the program handles related to the image, including, among others, each layer, the current selection, channels, transparency, paths and guides.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Binary file</span> Non-human-readable computer file encoded in binary form

A binary file is ANY computer file, this includes files that are a text file. The term "binary file" is often used as a term meaning "non-text file". Many binary file formats contain parts that can be interpreted as text; for example, some computer document files containing formatted text, such as older Microsoft Word document files, contain the text of the document but also contain formatting information in binary form.

MHTML, an initialism of "MIME encapsulation of aggregate HTML documents", is a Web archive file format used to combine, in a single computer file, the HTML code and its companion resources that are represented by external hyperlinks in the web page's HTML code. The content of an MHTML file is encoded using the same techniques that were first developed for HTML email messages, using the MIME content type multipart/related. MHTML files use an .mhtml or .mht filename extension.

iWork Office suite of applications created by Apple Inc.

iWork is an office suite of applications created by Apple for its macOS, iPadOS, and iOS operating systems, and also available cross-platform through the iCloud website.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Microsoft Office 2007</span> Version of Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office 2007 is an office suite for Windows, developed and published by Microsoft. It was officially revealed on March 9, 2006 and was the 12th version of Microsoft Office. It was released to manufacturing on November 3, 2006; it was subsequently made available to volume license customers on November 30, 2006, and later to retail on January 30, 2007, shortly after the completion of Windows Vista. The ninth major release of Office for Windows, Office 2007 was preceded by Office 2003 and succeeded by Office 2010. The Mac OS X equivalent, Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac, was released on January 15, 2008.

This is an overview of software support for the OpenDocument format, an open document file format for saving and exchanging editable office documents.

Data conversion is the conversion of computer data from one format to another. Throughout a computer environment, data is encoded in a variety of ways. For example, computer hardware is built on the basis of certain standards, which requires that data contains, for example, parity bit checks. Similarly, the operating system is predicated on certain standards for data and file handling. Furthermore, each computer program handles data in a different manner. Whenever any one of these variables is changed, data must be converted in some way before it can be used by a different computer, operating system or program. Even different versions of these elements usually involve different data structures. For example, the changing of bits from one format to another, usually for the purpose of application interoperability or of the capability of using new features, is merely a data conversion. Data conversions may be as simple as the conversion of a text file from one character encoding system to another; or more complex, such as the conversion of office file formats, or the conversion of image formats and audio file formats.

Rich Text Format Directory, also known as RTFD, or Rich Text Format with Attachments, is a primary document format of TextEdit, an application native to NeXTSTEP and macOS which has also been ported to other versions of Unix. The file format is based on the Rich Text Format, but can also include "attachments" such as images and animations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">OmegaT</span> Computer assisted translation tool written in Java

OmegaT is a computer-assisted translation tool written in the Java programming language. It is free software originally developed by Keith Godfrey in 2000, and is currently developed by a team led by Aaron Madlon-Kay.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Siag Office</span> Extremely lightweight office suite

Siag Office is a tightly integrated free software office package for Unix-like operating systems. It consists of the spreadsheet SIAG, the word processor Pathetic Writer (PW), the animation program Egon Animator, the text editor XedPlus, the file manager Xfiler and the previewer Gvu.

Nota Bene is an integrated software suite of applications, including word processing, reference management, and document text analysis software that is focused on writers and scholars in the Humanities, Social Sciences, and the Arts. The integrated suite is referred to as the Nota Bene Workstation. It runs on Microsoft Windows and Macintosh.

Microsoft Office shared tools are software components that are included in all Microsoft Office products.

References

  1. ↑ Robin Williams (1993). Jargon:An Informal Dictionary of Computer Terms.
  2. ↑ Isaac V. Kerlow (2004). "The Art of 3D Computer Animation and Effects". Wiley.


This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.