Computers/File Formats
As a believer in free software, I also believe in free file formats.
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File Formats I Approve of
The file formats I describe here are file formats that I use myself, and that I would like everybody else to use. Sometimes they are superior both technologically and when it comes to freedom, while other times they are inferior technologically. Regardless of their technological level, I will prefer free file formats out of principle.
Image
- Lossy encoding of choice: JPEG (use this for photographies that need not be retouched)
- Lossless encoding of choice: PNG (use this for everything else; graphs, cartoons, drawings, illustrations, ...)
Audio
Video
- Encoding of choice: Theora
Container
- Container of choice: Matroska
Editable Documents
- Anything that is plain-text, like LaTeX
- Any of the Open Document Format types
Non-editable Documents
File Formats I Tolerate
The file formats I describe here may not be free. They are tolerated because they are either the only ones of their kind, or very widespread, and not locked down to one single application.
Images
None. Stick to JPEG and PNG as both are freely available and easy to use. If needed, convert your old formats to either JPEG or PNG as per the requirements listed above.
Audio
- Lossy encodings: mp3, the de-facto lossy audio codec. I tolerate this format, because the file format can be written and read by many applications. Vorbis is still to be preferred.
- Lossless encodings: None. Stick to FLAC, and ensure its widespread adoption.
Video
- Video encodings: H.264 can be tolerated for existing video. For any new encodings, please use Theora.
Container
- Containers: Ogg can be tolerated for existing media files, however Matroska is clearly superior and should be used for any new media files. As for the other container formats, most, if not all the streams that fit into them can be losslessly moved into a Matroska container instead, and this is the recommended course of action.
Editable Documents
- RTF can be accepted for existing documents. Please use the Open Document Format for new documents.
Non-editable Documents
- None. Stick to PDF.
Other
Anything not listed below is de-facto tolerated, as long as it's possible to open in freely available free software applications.
File Formats I Don't Accept
The file formats I describe here should be avoided at all cost. If you send me anything using these file formats, I will either completely ignore your files, or send you a reply that says I want your file in a different format.
- Anything Microsoft created not specifically allowed above. This include Windows Media files, Microsoft Office files and whatever other Microsoft specific file formats.
- Images encoded with other encodings than specified above. Don't send me GIF, TIFF, TGA or other such proprietary images.
- Videos encoded with other encodings than specified above. Don't send me Quicktime, DivX or RealVideo or other such proprietary videos.
- Audio files encoded with other encoding than specified above. Don't send me Quicktime, Apple Lossless, RealAudio or other such proprietary audios. I don't even want plain WAV files. Show me enough respect to compress your audio somehow, huh? FLAC is readily available on all common operating systems if you must send something losslessly.
- Anything that is only possible to open in non-free software applications.
