Talk:List of file formats
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"OGM is a shell, which enables any form of compression to be used"
Shouldn't it be container not shell? Xorx77 19:02, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)
- Yeah, on a related note, .ogg should be in here somewhere. It normally contains Ogg Vorbis files but could contain all types of media. --Twinxor 19:46, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
What about *.mar? ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird/nightly/latest-trunk/
Contents |
[edit] Sorting
I suggest we sort the categories of file formats.
Also when one adds an entry one should list alphabetically.
--Numa 02:53, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Presentation
I think this info could be presented much more neatly in the form of tables. There could be column headings for file extension, file format, primary application (if applicable), and comments. Something like so:
| Extension | File Format | Primary Application | Notes |
| .doc | Word document | Microsoft Word | Also used as a plain text extension by some applications |
| .ged | GEDCOM file | N/A | Interchangeable file format used between genealogy programs |
Someone more familiar with tables could probably do it a bit better-looking with colour coding and such like but you get the idea. Suggestions? Zunaid 10:13, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
- Several file formats have multiple extensions. What then, huh??? (Probably just put the most common ones in the cell, separated by commas.)--Jack Schitt 00:54, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
-
- Yup. I've put all the presentation stuff into "Presentation", so that it's all together and easier to find; that means that the discussion of that issue is below here, and the conclusion appears to be to have a comma-separated list of extensions. Guy Harris 01:33, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
- More than one entry in the table could have the same extension, and an entry in the table can have more than one extension (e.g., both a.out and ELF would include ".so" as one of the possible extensions, along with ".o", although it should also list "none" as a possible extension).
- I.e., something such as
| Extensions | File Format | Primary Application | Notes |
| none, .so, .o | a.out | Unix executable code | Also used for object files and shared objects |
| none, .so, .o | ELF | Unix executable code | Also used for object files, shared objects, and core dumps |
- or, alternatively, have separate entries for each extension:
| Extension | File Format | Primary Application | Notes |
| none | a.out | Unix executable code | |
| .so | a.out | Unix shared objects | |
| .o | a.out | Unix object files | |
| none | ELF | Unix executable code | Also used for core dumps |
| .so | ELF | Unix shared objects | |
| .o | ELF | Unix object files |
- I'm not sure which of those is preferable. Guy Harris 21:48, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
- I agree with you, the file format is the more fundamental concept. I lean towards the first representation. If there are very many extensions it could always be made multi-line rather than going too far horizontally. Next q, how do we sort them? I suggest alphabetically by format (rather than by extension) within each sub-section. Zunaid 08:17, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
Another variant of the first representation would be
| Extensions | File Format | Primary Applications | Notes |
| none, .so, .o | a.out | Unix executable code, object files and shared objects | |
| none, .so, .o | ELF | Unix executable code, object files, shared objects, and core dumps |
with all of them treated as primary.
I agree that we should sort them by format, as that's the fundamental concept. Guy Harris 09:03, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
- I'm not the expert on UNIX, but if all three can genuinely be considered the "primary" use of that extension then they all belong under that heading. However your first table looks and reads much better, so if there's a chance of only selecting one primary application I would go for that. Two other things, if we're gonna sort by format, then the format column should be first followed by the extension. Also, IMHO it would be clearer to the reader if "none" were italicized as none, with the other valid extensions being in plain text (i.e. remove any confusion that the extension might be .none). Using the first table as an example, it would then look like so:
| File Format | Extensions | Primary Application | Notes |
| a.out | none, .so, .o | Unix executable code | Also used for object files and shared objects |
| ELF | none, .so, .o | Unix executable code | Also used for object files, shared objects, and core dumps |
- Okay, just one more point. At the moment the sub-sections are listed in what seems to be quite arbitrary order. I suggest we sort them by popularity/commonality of usage. So e.g. the video, graphics and audio formats would be right at the top, followed by the wordpro/spreadsheet stuff. The last of the "common" stuff would probably be the programming languages. The specialist stuff like CAD, accounting and other packages should be nearer the bottom, allowing the casual reader to glance over the main things without having to wade through things they might not have heard of. Zunaid 11:43, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
- can we reopen this organization discussion? This needs something! WarBaCoN 05:31, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] lnk
I want to create an article for lnk at Lnk (computing) and add lnk to the list here, but I don't know what category it should go under. Thanks. -- 201.78.233.162 16:12, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
- If you're referring to the Windows "shortcut" files, then, of the current categories, the correct one would be "Other". You could, I guess, define a new category for those types of files, but the only other file format I know of that would fit into that category would be Mac OS alias files - Unix symbolic links are sort of similar, but they don't have a special file format; they have a special file system type, but the contents are just a text string containing a relative or absolute pathname of the target file.
- Also, I'm not sure "Lnk" would be the right name for the page; I'd be tempted to call it "Shortcut" or something such as that, but there's already a Computer shortcut page for that, so you really would, at most, want to make Lnk (computing) redirect to Computer shortcut. Guy Harris 09:27, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
[edit] FLV (*.flv)
Added FLV (*.flv) to section Video. If anything incorrect here, please correct. Thanks. -- 201.51.231.141 22:18, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Linking
I suggest that links be made to each of the respective extension such that anyone running a search on the extension alone would be redirected to this page or perhaps other pages that are more specific to each particular extension that may be searched.
P. S. I'm really admiring the article about Wikipedia in the September 2006 issue of The Atlantic Monthly.
C-U RPCV 17:45, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
- Err, what do you mean by "I suggest that links be made to each of the respective extension"? If you mean "each entry should link to an article describing the file format, if such an article exists", yes, I agree, and, in fact, think that's sort of the Obvious Right Thing To Do, and is already being done for a lot of file formats. Guy Harris 17:30, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
I stand corrected--although "cwk" doesn't show up for two scroll bars. Perhaps some other streamlined form of disambiguation (or clarification, as I prefer) is in order.
C-U RPCV 17:45, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
