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FOSS Open Standards/Importance and Benefits of Open Standards

The benefits of using open standards have been alluded to in the introduction. Here we shall delve into more details on the importance and benefits of open standards.

Benefits of Using Open Standards
Numerous benefits are obtained if an organization ensures that its technological and IT procurements and implementations follow open standards as far as possible. First and foremost, there is less chance of being locked in by a specific technology and/or vendor. Since the specifications are known and open, it is always possible to get another party to implement the same solution adhering to the standards being followed. Another major benefit is that it will be easier for systems from different parties or using different technologies to interoperate and communicate with one another. As a result, there will be improved data interchange and exchange. It will not be necessary to use the same software or software from a particular vendor to read or write data files. For example, if a multinational organization requires that all its offices worldwide use office software applications that can read and write files using the Open Document format - an open, standardized XML-based file format from the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS). An individual office will have the flexibility of using whatever office software that is best suited for it and at the same time be able to read, write and exchange documents with other offices in the organization.

Using open standards will also offer better protection of the data files created by an application against obsolescence of the application. If the data file format used is proprietary then, should the application become obsolete, the user may have a difficult time converting the data files to another format needed by a new application. However, if the data format follows an open standard and, hence, is known, either the new application will be able to use it as it is or it will be easier to convert the data so that the new application can use it.

It stands to reason that if a user demands that open standards are adhered to, there will be more choices available as more vendors can participate to offer solutions and it may be possible to even mix and match solutions from multiple vendors to provide best-of-breed solutions as far as possible.

If open standards are followed, applications are easier to port from one platform to another since the technical implementation follows known guidelines and rules, and the interfaces, both internally and externally, are known. In addition to this, the skills learned from one platform or application can be utilized with possibly less re-training needed. This can be contrasted with the usage in applications of proprietary standards that are not openly published and where there is inadequate information publicly available about them.

The benefits obtained with respect to using data and file formats whose specifications are publicly published and widely accessible cannot be over-emphasized, especially with respect to an organization that possesses huge amounts of data stored electronically. A national government is a good example of such an organization. If the data formats are not known or easily available, the organization may find it difficult to migrate or change its information systems since it can be prohibitively expensive or even impossible to convert data files.

National Considerations
From the national viewpoint, the usage of open standards by a government is even more important. In this information age, a government will need to use IT solutions to ensure that it has adequate and reliable information to enable it to govern the country effectively. It is vital that these IT implementations make use of standards that are open as far as possible. In cases where open standards are not available, the government may want to consider other standards that are freely available for usage and implementation. It should also take into consideration how open these standards are and whether they have the possibility of becoming open standards later.

All this can help ensure that there is less likelihood of its information systems being locked in later by any single technology or product. It is also in the interests of national security that open standards are followed to guard against the possibility of over-reliance on foreign technologies/products. Imagine the implications to a sovereign nation if the electronic records of its citizens are kept in databases that can be accessed readily only by proprietary software from a foreign vendor or the documents of the government are kept in a format that belongs to a vendor who thus has total control over its accessibility both now and in the future.

Another important national benefit is that open standards will make it easier and, in some cases, the only possible means for local companies to participate as major players in supplying services and solutions to the government. This is because the local companies usually lack the strength and resources of multinationals and may be strong only in certain areas or solutions. The government can leverage open standards to mix and match solutions from different suppliers in order to give the local suppliers a chance.

It is a reality in the IT world that the main language used and supported by all mainstream software is English and because of this it is sometimes difficult to produce electronic documents in another language. The availability of an open character coding standard, Unicode, designed to support the worldwide interchange, processing, and display of the written texts of diverse languages makes it feasible for the translation and localization of software and electronic office documents for nations or cultures whose language is not English.

Particular Benefits of Open Standards
Open standards are particularly beneficial to some IT activities or services. Some of these are examined in greater detail here.

File Formats
Modern information systems generate data (lots of it in many cases) that have to be stored in some form of electronic file formats for efficient storage, retrieval and exchange. If their specifications are not publicly known, only software and systems from the owner of these proprietary formats can readily access them. Also, the exchange of information is essential to the functioning of modern society. This exchange will be severely hampered if non-open file formats are utilized as products from one vendor may not be able to retrieve, access or store the information from the products of another vendor properly.

In some cases, while the format may be known, it may be the property of a particular party and this party may control the way the format evolves or is used. In such cases, users can have very little say or control over the format. Also it may be possible that the owner may not publish the format specifications at a later stage for a new version. So while compatible systems can be created that can access the files now, there is no guarantee of this when a newer version comes out. In addition, there have been cases where, when a proprietary format becomes popular and is widely used by the industry, the owner of the format starts to impose restrictions like charging a fee or royalty charges (if it is patented) for using the format at a later stage. The case of Microsoft attempting to charge flash drive makers and manufacturers of devices, such as digital cameras, a licensing fee for using its File Allocation Table or FAT file format is a good example of this.

All this shows that it is of utmost importance that electronic file formats should follow some specifications that are accessible to all interested parties and also be developed by processes that are open and easy for any party to participate. In other words, they should be implemented using open standards. It is vital in today's information-centric society that the data from which information is derived can be stored and exchanged following standards that are open so that no single party or even group can control the access to this data.

Office Applications
This lack of complete compatibility between documents created using MS Office and the competing alternatives has prevented some users from using or migrating to the latter. This effectively results in a specific product/vendor lock-in.

This example illustrates that open and standardized file formats are needed to give users the flexibility and freedom to choose and use products from different vendors and to prevent them from being locked in to a specific product and/or vendor. The published OpenDocument standard from OASIS and ISO (ISO/IEC 26300) for office applications offers this. Currently, applications that support this open format include StarOffice, KOffice, IBM Works, AbiWord and OpenOffice.org. Microsoft does not support this but instead it has come up with its own XML-based file formats for its office suite. Again, while the MS Office XML schemas are publicly published and licensed for use royalty-free, they are owned by a single vendor (Microsoft) and hence are subject to the potential abuse discussed previously for non-open formats. In an attempt to allay fears over this and acceding to the requests of some of its biggest customers, the Microsoft Office XML file formats have been submitted to European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA) International for development as formal standard.

Internet Services and Applications
The Internet is perhaps the best showcase of how when technologies are implemented using mainly open standards, there is almost universal accessibility, acceptance and benefits. Most networking infrastructure of the Internet is implemented based on open standards drawn up by IETF. In addition, many services and applications running now as well as being planned for the future are being implemented following open standards and recommendations from several bodies notably, IETF, W3C and OASIS. As a result, today, it is possible for one to access major services offered on the Internet using a multitude of environments ranging from commodity PCs, hand-held Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and mobile devices to proprietary set-top black boxes and TV sets. Without this adherence to open standards, the Internet would not be as ubiquitous as it is today.


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Horticulture/Artemisia vulgaris

Artemisia vulgaris (Mugwort) is a species in the family ../Asteraceae/. It is one of several species in the genus Artemisia/ known as mugwort, and is also occasionally known as Felon Herb, St. John's Plant, Chrysanthemum Weed, and Wild Wormwood. It is native to temperate Europe, Asia and northern Africa, but is also present in North America as an invasive weed. It is a very common plant on nitrogenous soils such as waste places and roadsides.

Description
It is a tall herbaceous perennial plant growing 1–2 m (rarely 2.5 m) tall, with a woody root. The leaves are 5–20 cm long, dark green, pinnate, with dense white tomentose hairs on the underside. The erect stem often has a red-purplish tinge.

The rather small flowers (5 mm long) are radially symmetrical with many yellow or dark red petals. The narrow and numerous capitula (flower heads) spread out in racemose panicles. It flowers from July to September.

Similar species
A. vulgaris is often confused with the Chinese mugwort (A. verlotiorum), which is very common too. The latter has oblonge reddish to brown capitula, its stems are green and the leaves broader, lighter coloured and more dense on the stem. The plant's scent is both stronger and more pleasant than that of the common mugwort. It flowers very late in the summer, but reproduces mainly by stolons, thus forming thick groups. The two species share the same habitats.

Mugwort is also sometimes confused with the ragweeds. In the garden, the foliage can look similar to that of hardy mums (Dendranthema spp.), but can be distinguished easily by the light-colored undersides of the leaves, as opposed to the green undersides of chrysanthemum leaves.

Uses
Mugwort has both culinary and herbal uses. See the Wikipedia article on Artemisia vulgaris for details.

Control
This plant is very aggressive in the garden, and can be very difficult to eradicate once established.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Horticulture/Artemisia vulgaris


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FOSS Open Standards/Standard-Setting and Open Standards

This section will look into standard-setting processes and the more important standards bodies in IT, and how they relate to the setting and adoption of open standards.

Standard-Setting Organizations
In this document, the term Standard-Setting Organization (SSO) is taken to refer to an organization that attempts to set standards or make recommendations which, when widely deployed, become de facto standards. There are many SSOs, national, regional as well as industry-based. A formal SSO refers to one that is recognized directly or indirectly by a government entity. Very often, there will exist a formal SSO in a country that the government recognizes as the national standards body and which has the authority to designate a specification as the national standard for the country. Thus, for example, in India, the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) is the national standards body; in the USA, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) is the official body; while in the United Kingdom, it is the British Standards Institute (BSI).

While any organization can come up with its own specification and call it its standard, to be an internationally acceptable standard, it has to be either set or adopted/adapted by an SSO that is recognized as an international standard-setting body. The three organizations having the highest international recognition are the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), International Electro-technical Commission (IEC) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

ISO is an international standard-setting body made up mainly of representation from national standards bodies. IEC is a standards organization that deals mainly in setting standards for electrical, electronic and related technologies. A body that is an accredited representative to ISO or IEC is called a Standard Development Organization (SDO); most national standards bodies are SDOs. ISO produces standards in many domains, including IT. Many of its standards are also developed jointly with IEC, in particular, the ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC 1) is active in setting standards for the IT domain.

ITU, one of the world's oldest international standards bodies, was established to standardize and regulate international radio and telecommunications. With the convergence of IT and telecommunications, ITU (specifically its Telecommunication Standardization Sector, ITU-T) is now also involved in specifying standards (or Recommendations as it calls them) that impact the ICT world.

Standard-Setting Processes
The setting or creation of new technical standards can basically follow several main processes: de jure, de facto, and industry-created standards.

De jure Standards
De jure standards are normally created by formal SSOs following procedures that have been established by these bodies. Based on a need, work on the creation of a new standard is proposed by one or more members of the organization. This is called a new work item proposal. If there is enough support, work on drafting the new standard is started by a small committee or working group. The working draft may go through several cycles of deliberation, voting and modifications by the working group members (as far as possible, a consensus among the members is usually sought) before it is released as a draft to other members of the main organization or committee for scrutiny. At this level, it may be sent back to the working group for further changes and the cycle repeated until it is accepted as a draft standard for publication by the organization. Once it is published, it becomes a formal standard from the organization.

In SSOs, like ISO, the final acceptability of the draft is determined by a formal vote from the participating national bodies. After this final round of voting, the draft document is published.

The advantage of such a process as described above is that formal and accountable procedures are followed and each step in the process is accomplished through consensus as far as possible. The members of the SSO are given an opportunity to contribute during the drafting of the document. Some SSOs also allow contributions from invited subject-matter experts. The idea is that everyone interested in the standard should participate; and the standards creation process be seen as neutral and transparent, not controlled by any particular group or party.

There are several disadvantages to the process involved in the creation of de jure standards. First of all, the entire standard drafting process can be quite long because of the structure and makeup of the formal SSOs. For example, in the case of ISO standards, there is commonly a time span of two to three years from the new work item proposal to the publication of a standard.

While the standard-setting process formally tries to be neutral and impartial to any group, in practice this may not be so. In some cases, vendors and commercial organizations will send their experts to participate and push their own agendas, e.g. the inclusion of the specifications of their particular technology into the standard. Also some formal SSOs, like ISO, allow participation mainly by the national standards body only, so direct participation is restricted. However, interested parties should be able to participate at the local level via their national standards body, that will then carry the so-called national viewpoints, which may or may not concur with those of the interested parties.

The publication of a de jure standard by no means guarantees its success in implementation and acceptance by the industry and users. Sometimes, a simpler and more practical standard from the industry may win over a more complex and difficult to implement standard simply because implementation is simpler and faster, which results in better acceptance in the industry. A classic example of this is the highly complex but more complete X.400 suite of messaging protocols which is not widely used today as compared with the simpler but more easily implemented SMTP mail protocol that forms the backbone of Internet email. The former was developed by the formal SSOs, ISO and ITU-T, while the latter came from the industry-driven IETF body.

Examples of internationally recognized SSOs that are active in putting out de jure standards are ISO, IEEE, ITU-T and ANSI. Examples of widely used de jure standards include:
 * 1) EEE 802 - a set of standards for Local Area Networking (LAN)
 * 2) ISO 10918 - a standard for the JPEG graphics compression and file format
 * 3) ITU-T X.25 - a standard for packet switching networks

Not all standards are created from scratch. Very often, an entity (e.g. an industry forum or group) may propose that a standards body, like ISO, adopt or adapt its standard or specification as an international standard. Sometimes a de facto standard may also be submitted to a standards body for adopting/ adapting as an international standard.

De facto Standards
In the fast-moving IT industry, very often, some technology or product may become so popular that, as a result, it becomes generally accepted and widely used by a majority of users throughout the industry. As a result of this, a de facto standard is established that everybody seems to follow as though it was an authorized standard from a standards body. Examples of these are:
 * 1)  the FAT file system from Microsoft
 * 2)  the Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF)
 * 3)  the Hayes command set for dial-up modem control
 * 4)  the Hewlett-Packard Printer Command Language (PCL)

The main advantage of a de facto standard is that widespread acceptance in its implementation and usage is assured. It is unlike a de jure standard where the standard is just debated and agreed upon by the committee of the SSO and hence industry acceptance is by no means guaranteed.

Since a de facto standard does not have to wait for committee debate and approval, changes and modifications are made much faster. Indeed, very often it tends to change as and when the product is upgraded or improved.

The main disadvantage of a standard set in this way is that, very often, it starts off as part of a product implementation and as such will invariably include some technology and/or specification that is either owned or controlled by the vendor or group that produces the product. Unless that party is willing to give up control or at least share the control by allowing other stakeholders to be involved in developing and driving the de facto standard easily, there is a possibility of a lock-in later.

In some cases, after some time, a de facto standard may be submitted to a more independent standards body for adoption or adaptation whereby the proprietary control is relinquished and it may then become a real open standard. An example of this is the Network File System (NFS) that was originally introduced by Sun Microsystems as a means of allowing a user to access a file on a remote machine in a way similar to how a local file is used. Later, with the widespread usage of NFS even on other vendors' systems, it became part of the TCP/IP application standards from the IETF.

Industry-driven Standards
These are sort of intermediate between the de jure standards set by formal standards bodies and product based de facto standards set mainly by vendors and owners of products. There is a trend nowadays in the IT industry for various consortia or groups to be formed among stakeholders in a particular segment of the industry. One of the functions of such a group may be to develop standards and/or recommendations deemed important and necessary for the progress of the sector. A good example of such a group is OASIS. OASIS is a not-for-profit, international consortium that drives the development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards. It produces many Web services and Internet-related standards for e-business deployment, such as Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) and OpenDocument Format for Office Applications. The W3C is another consortium that has influence in the Web industry. It develops interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools) for Web usage, e.g. HTML, XML, SOAP, etc. Although it is not a formal standard-setting body, it does come out with recommendations on Web technologies and services that are followed by many developers and/or vendors.

While the industry may adopt and support many of the standards or recommendations from these industry consortia as de facto standards, the established ones are eventually submitted to be adopted by traditional international standards organization like ISO to become a "legitimate" international standard. Many of these industry bodies have on-going liaisons with the technical committees of the international SSOs.

Open Standards Organizations
Bodies dealing with standards are usually non-profit and may be government-appointed, industry-backed, non-government organizations or even voluntary ones. While almost all of these claim to be "open", some are more open than others especially with respect to the free and easy accessibility and open participation criteria discussed in the Introduction. Some more active organizations that are generally perceived to be open include IETF, IEEE, OASIS, W3C and the Free Standards Group (FSG).

Note that this list is by no means an exhaustive listing of open standards bodies and indeed some may dispute the inclusion of one or more of these and/or the exclusion of other bodies if the accessibility and open participation criteria are applied strictly. However, in terms of important IT standardization activities and relative "openness" to world-wide participation and access by organizations big and small, the organizations listed earlier do stand out.

Standards and/or recommendations from these bodies account for many of the standards being deployed or developed in the IT and Internet/Web industries. Many of these standards have also been adopted as standards by international SSOs like ISO.

As noted earlier, these non-formal SSOs often have liaisons, especially at the technical working group level, with formal organizations such as ISO and ITU-T. Therefore, there is awareness and knowledge of the work and activities of the respective working groups from the various organizations working in the same area.

The Internet Engineering Task Force
Internet networking standards and protocols, like TCP/IP, became de facto standards when the Internet was widely embraced throughout the world. IETF is charged with developing and promoting Internet standards. It is a voluntary organization with membership open to any interested individual. The actual technical work of IETF is done by its working groups which are formed, based on topics, into several key areas. Each area is overseen by an area director and the area directors, together with the IETF Chair, form the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG), which is responsible for the overall operation of IETF. ETF is overseen by the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) which is, in turn, responsible to the Internet Society (ISOC).

The drafting and setting of specifications and standards by IETF is carried out considerably faster when compared to the formal SSOs. IETF working groups do the drafting work. A new set of specifications starts off as an Internet Draft which is placed in IETF's "Internet-Drafts" directory and also replicated on a number of Internet hosts. Interested parties are encouraged to comment on this, usually through the working group's mailing lists. Based on comments and feedback, the draft undergoes several rounds of modification and then moves on to become a Requests for Comments (RFC) document and is published.

The specifications in a RFC document may be implemented by the Internet community and it can become a de facto standard if it receives wide acceptance. An RFC specification for which significant implementation and successful operational experience have been obtained may be elevated to the Internet standard level and is assigned a number in the STD series while retaining its RFC number.

The World Wide Web Consortium
W3C is an international consortium that specializes in the development of protocols and guidelines for use on the World Wide Web. It is the leading body for specifications on Web technologies and applications. It calls its guidelines and specifications "Recommendations" which it considers as equivalent to Web, standards. Many W3C Recommendations have been submitted to a formal standards body like ISO to become international standards.

W3C believes in complete interoperability for the Web to function and realize its full potential. Towards this end it publishes open standards for Web languages and protocols. This makes it possible for Web technologies to be compatible with one another and to allow any hardware and software used to access the Web to work together.

W3C is an independent body, membership is open to any organization and there are several categories of membership depending on the nature of the organization. W3C counts vendors of technology products and services, content providers, corporate users, research laboratories, standards bodies, and governments among its members. Individuals who are not employees of W3C member organizations can also be involved by participating in the technical discussions in its many public mailing lists.

The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards
OASIS is a non-profit, international consortium that drives the development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards. Standards produced by OASIS include those for security, Web services, conformance, business transactions, supply chain, public sector, and interoperability within and between marketplaces.

Membership of OASIS is open to both individuals and organizations all over the world. There are several types of membership and OASIS has a diverse membership base, counting users and vendors, governments and universities, trade groups and service providers among its members.

OASIS prides itself on its transparent governance and operating procedures. The members themselves set the OASIS technical agenda using a process designed to promote consensus and unite disparate efforts. Completed work is ratified by open ballot before it is published as an OASIS standard.

The Free Standards Group
FSG is an independent, non-profit organization dedicated to accelerating the use of free and opensource software by developing and promoting standards. It is supported by both commercial corporations in the IT industry as well as the FOSS development community. All standards produced by FSG are available free and are distributed under open source licenses. Anyone can participate in and contribute to the FSG standards development by participating in the various FSG standards projects mailing lists.

The FSG is responsible for the important Linux Standard Base (LSB) standardization activity and the Open Internationalization (OpenI18N) initiative. Some LSB specifications have been submitted to the ISO/IEC JTC1 SC22 working group on GNU/Linux standardization.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
IEEE is a non-profit, technical, professional association of more than 360,000 individual members in over 175 countries. The IEEE Standards Association (IEEE-SA) is active in the development of technical standards in the fields of information technology, telecommunications, and energy and power. IEEE standards development is guided by the five basic principles of due process, openness, consensus, balance and right of appeal; it is open to all and not restricted to a particular type or category of participants.

The working groups that are developing the standards are open to the public and have well-publicized procedures regarding membership, voting, officers, record-keeping and other areas. They try to be as transparent as they can, agendas for meetings are distributed beforehand and the results of a group's deliberations are publicly available, usually through meeting minutes.

When a draft standard is deemed mature enough, it goes up for balloting to become an IEEE standard. The sponsor of the standard forms a balloting group by inviting people from an "invitation pool" The latter consists of IEEE-SA members or people who have paid a ballot fee and are interested in balloting some of the draft standards. Unlike the development stage where anyone can contribute comments, only members of the balloting group can vote in the ballot. The ballot sponsor has to take care that the balloting group is balanced with no domination by any one group or company.

Many IEEE standards have found international recognition and usage, e.g. the IEEE 802 series of LAN/ MAN networking standards like 802.3 (Ethernet) and 802.11 (Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi) ).


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FOSS Open Standards/Some Important Open Standards

This section will discuss some of the more important open standards that are either currently already available or actively being developed. The standards listed here are by no means exhaustive but they do represent those that are most widely used in the industry today.

Internet Networking and Applications/Services
The Internet is what it is today mainly because of the almost universal accessibility of the applications and services offered over it and its seamless connectivity. This is a direct result of the widespread use of open standards in the implementation of the Internet, both historically and currently. The standards mainly responsible for the Internet infrastructure and for the popular World Wide Web and Internet email services are highlighted here.

Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol
The TCP/IP suite of networking standards provides the foundation for the network infrastructure of the Internet. All major services and applications on the Internet ride on top of TCP/IP. These protocols were originally developed by the pioneers of the Internet, the engineers and scientists from universities, research institutions and companies who collaborated on the US Department of Defence's Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) project. This evolved to become the Internet as we know it today, and TCP/IP became a de facto standard. It is now an IETF Standard and IETF is charged with its continued development.

TCP/IP is a two-layered packet-switching specification in which data to be communicated between two end-points on a network is first broken up into smaller data packets that are then individually routed through the network from the source to the destination points. The higher layer, Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), manages the disassembling of the data into smaller packets at the source and the reassembling at the destination point upon receipt of the data packets. The lower layer, Internet Protocol (IP), handles the addressing and routing of each packet so that it gets to the correct destination.

TCP/IP just provides the transport mechanism for sending data across the Internet or an IP network. In order for this to be useful, a service or application has to be specified and implemented. Again, IETF is mainly responsible in overseeing and setting the specifications for most of these services. The widespread implementation and acceptance of these specifications coupled with open standards bodies like IETF and W3C make the Internet the best showcase for open standards at work. Some of these standards are listed below.

Hypertext Transfer Protocol
HTTP is perhaps the most widely used Internet service protocol. It is the primary method used to access the WWW. Web content, in the form of HTML pages and possibly also other multimedia formats, is transferred from a Web server to a user's Web accessing agent using the HTTP protocol. HTTP was developed by W3C in co-operation with IETF working groups. The standard most widely deployed and supported on the Web today is HTTP version 1.1 or HTTP/1.1.

The HTTP protocol is a request-response protocol using a client-server model in which an HTTP client, e.g. a Web browser, initiates a request by establishing a TCP connection to the server computer that will respond to the request commands sent by the client. The commands to support as well as for the behaviour of both client and server are spelt out in the HTTP specification.

It is through this universal acceptance of the HTTP protocol standard that the Web has become the ubiquitous information dissemination and exchange medium that it is now. One major factor in its wide acceptance by all the stakeholders and players on the Internet is its open standard status.

Hypertext Markup Language
While HTTP defines how the contents of a Web page can be transmitted between a Web server and a client, HTML is an open standard specifying the structure and presentation of the content. A document composed with HTML consists of the contents intermingled with symbols and tags that tell the software needed to interpret and display the HTML document structure and presentation of the content. The HTML specification is now being maintained by W3C. It has undergone several revisions and the most current specification is HTML 4.01. HTML is also available as an ISO standard, which is a subset of HTML 4.

In its simplest form, an HTML document consists of the text of the document as well as tags that specify the markup needed to be performed on it. For example, in the sample below:

My Work Experience

 Work Experience

 1990 - 1995 System engineer
 1995 - 2005 Network manager

The tags
and
specify that the text enclosed within them is to be rendered as third level headings, while the tag  specifies the display of a graphics file. The tags ,  specify that the text enclosed within them should be rendered as bold, and the tag
 signifies a line break.

An HTML user agent software is needed to render a document made up of HTML and the most common agent is a Web browser. If the W3C HTML specifications are adhered to, an HTML document can be displayed properly by any user agent (which conforms to the specifications) and this can form the basis for a standard format for textual document information exchange. One major limitation of using HTML to display a document though, is that page breaks are not easily represented or controlled.

The use of HTML in email has gained popularity as it enables one to impose some simple formatting on the text as well as embed graphics and multimedia content into the message. However, it is generally considered not good practice by security-conscious users to utilize HTML in mail messages as some popular HTML-enabled email software have been known to possess vulnerabilities. This makes them open to potential exploitation by a rogue HTML email message which may result in the compromise of a user's system.

Email Protocols
Internet email has become almost as important as the telephone service. Every time we send an email, we assume that the mail will be relayed correctly by the mail server to its destination. When we send attachments or incorporate some non-textual content into our email we just assume that the attachment will be incorporated correctly and when the recipient gets it s/he will be able to get it back into its original form. All this works seamlessly irrespective of the hardware and software deployed because Internet email makes use of several important open standards in its mail transmission as well as in the encoding of email messages.

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
SMTP enables the transport and routing of email from the sender to the recipient using their email addresses. This standard is client-server based whereby the SMTP client (usually the user's email software or mail user agent) will initiate a TCP connection to the SMTP server (the mail relay host). Communications between the server and client is done using the SMTP protocol. This is a simple text-based protocol where, essentially, the client informs the server of the email addresses of the sender and the recipient(s).

After that, if all goes well and the server allows it (based on its mail relay policy), the client will transmit the mail message to the server. The server will then attempt to deliver it to the computer housing the recipient's mailbox or, if necessary, forward the email to another server for delivery to the recipient's mailbox.

The SMTP protocol started out supporting only 7-bit ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) text in the messages, effectively limiting it to the transmission of English-based text. NonEnglish language texts that make use of more than the 7-bit ASCII character set as well as binary file attachments have to be encoded by the email user agent software before transmission. The message format of this text-based mail is specified by another IETF standard, RFC 2822. The SMTP standard has been extended to support 8-bit text, permitting the transmission without encoding of text messages in more languages.

Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions
As Internet email became more and more popular, users found it a convenient, economical and efficient way to send information to one another. Users tried to send other types of content, e.g. audio, video, images, software programs, besides text messages via email. However, since the original Internet email specifications were meant primarily for English-based text messages, some new sets of specifications had to be drawn up to allow interoperability and seamless transmission of multipurpose content. This resulted in IETF producing the Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) standard.

MIME is an extension of the basic text-based Internet mail standard. It defines mechanisms for sending other kinds of information in email. These include non-English text using character sets beyond ASCII and binary file content such as multimedia files and computer software. To support these as well as to retain backward compatibility with the simple ASCII-based mail format, a set of email headers for specifying additional attributes of a message, e.g. content type, and a set of transfer encodings that can be used to represent 8-bit data using characters from the 7-bit ASCII set are defined. The encoding of non-ASCII characters in mail message headers is also catered for in MIME allowing the usage of nonEnglish characters in them. The MIME standard specifies a means to register new content types and transfer encodings making it flexible for supporting new multimedia types in the future.

MIME is also an important standard for the Web as the HTTP protocol makes use of mail-like MIME formatting rules and syntax for its data formatting.

The Extensible Markup Language
The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a Recommendation from W3C that specifies a meta markup language (a meta language is a language for describing other languages) for the creation of other markup languages for use on the WWW. HTML is a single predefined markup language and hence possesses severe limitations to describe and represent all sorts of data for dissemination, exchange and interaction. XML, being a markup specification language, is capable of being used to design markups for describing many different kinds of data for storage, transmission, or processing by a program. It describes the data but it does not tell you what you should do with the data.

One should note that XML and HTML were designed with different goals in that XML was designed to store, carry, and exchange data whereas HTML was designed to display data and to focus on how data looks. XML was created for deployment on the Web by using a subset of an existing, widely used international standard for text document markup - the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML).

Due to its design goals, XML is well suited for data transfer and exchange and as a format for document storage and processing. This and the fact that it is under the charge of an open specifications/standards body, W3C, has resulted in XML being used as the base for specifying many other data formats and exchange protocols. According to the community-based XML portal, XML.ORG, it is now viewed as the standard way for information exchange in environments that do not share common platforms.

Special purpose languages and standards developed using XML for specific environments or activities are announced almost daily and several hundred have been adopted since XML 1.0 was released in February 1998. In particular, the e-government and e-commerce segments are very active in developing and implementing XML-based specifications.

A simple XML document is shown below:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?> <?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="bookcollection.xsl"?> <BookCollection> <Book> <Title>Chronicles: Volume One</Title> <Author>Bob Dylan</Author> <Publisher>Simon and Schuster</Publisher> <Year>2004</Year> </Book> <Book> <Title>Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire</Title> <Author>J.K. Rowling</Author> <Publisher>Bloomsbury Publishing</Publisher> <Year>2000</Year> </Book> </BookCollection>

Note that while XML uses syntax tags to identify various types of data in a document file, these tags are not predefined. So the document creator has to define and describe them using what is called an XML schema and associate the document with the schema. To create the schema, an XML schema language is used, e.g. Document Type Definition (DTD), XML Schema and RELAX NG. The purpose of the schema is to define the legal building blocks of the XML document, i.e. the elements, data attributes, tags, etc., that can appear in the document. DTD has limitations with respect to its extensibility and lack of support of several useful features, e.g. data types and namespaces. XML Schema, which is also another W3C Recommendation, is more suitable for use in many practical Web applications.

While the schema may define the legal components of the XML document, it does not carry information about how to display the data. So in order for the data in an XML document to be displayed properly by say, a Web browser, a display style has to be specified. The Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) is used to perform this. Styling is about transforming and formatting information and the W3C specifications separate these processes. In addition, the components in an XML document have to be navigated to extract and process them. Hence, the XSL Recommendation from W3C consists of three parts:
 * 1) XSL Transformations (XSLT): a language for transforming XML documents
 * 2) XSL Formatting Objects (XSL-FO): a language for formatting XML documents
 * 3) XML Path Language (XPath): a language for navigating in XML documents

An example of an XSLT transformation of the XML example document above to a Web browser displayable HTML output is:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?> <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"> <xsl:template match="/">
Book Collection

 Title	 Author	 Publisher	 Year
 <xsl:for-each select="BookCollection/Book">
 <xsl:value-of select="Title"/>	 <xsl:value-of select="Author"/>	 <xsl:value-of select="Publisher"/>	 <xsl:value-of select="Year"/>
 </xsl:for-each>
   </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet>

Computer Graphics and Multimedia
In the old days of computing, the display was predominantly text-based and any graphics displayed was, at best, line-graphics implemented using special line drawing character sets. Computer terminals that can display full-fledged graphics were expensive and used only for special purposes or applications. Today, with the proliferation of inexpensive personal computers that have the power to process and display graphics and multimedia, even the user interface is graphics-based. One of the main attractions of the Web is its widespread support and usage of graphic images and multimedia to make the content interesting and lively.

It is important that open standards are followed as much as possible in graphics and multimedia data storage, processing and retrieval to enable diverse devices and computing platforms to offer the same degree of Web experience.

Portable Network Graphics
In the early days of the Web when Internet links and connections were relatively slow, many simple images and animations displayed in Web pages made use of a graphics format called Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) as this format resulted in small graphic file sizes. The GIF format included the use of the Lempel-Ziv-Welch (LZW) compression algorithm that was patented in the USA by Unisys who eventually decided to ask for royalty payments for all software that utilize GIF. This led to the creation of the Portable Network Graphics (PNG) format to replace GIF for use as a single-image Web format. The PNG format later became a W3C Recommendation as well as an ISO international standard (ISO/IEC 15948).

PNG is an extensible file format for the lossless, portable, well-compressed storage of raster images. Indexed-colour, greyscale, and true colour images are supported, plus an optional alpha channel for transparency. It is fully streamable with a progressive display option making it useful for online graphics display in Web pages. It also boasts robust features, providing both full file integrity checking and simple detection of common transmission errors.

The X Window System
The graphics user interface (GUI) that is now common on desktop computers uses a graphical window metaphor as the basic user interface. This window system GUI enables different programs to run simultaneously in their own individual windows and these windows can be opened, closed and resized. The windowing systems found on platforms like Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X are proprietary ones. On the other hand, UNIX and UNIX-like operating systems (e.g. GNU/Linux, FreeBSD) make use of an open window system - the X Window System.

The X Window System, or X, is an open windowing system standard led by the X.Org Foundation. X provides a framework for the display and management of graphical information and on top of this a GUI may be built. X uses a client-server model. The X client is usually the application that sends graphical output for display on the X server. The X server interacts with the user using primarily the keyboard and mouse as input devices and the input is transmitted to the client to act upon.

The X client and server may be running on the same machine or they may be on different physical devices connected together over a network. The intrinsic client-server property of X constitutes the main difference between it and other well known window systems like Microsoft Windows, which simply displays graphical applications local to the device on which the application is running on.

Being an open standard, besides UNIX and UNIX-like systems, X has been implemented on a variety of hardware and operating systems, including the various generations of Macintoshes, PCs running MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows as well as OpenVMS from Hewlett-Packard (formerly Digital Equipment), etc.

Ogg Vorbis
Ogg Vorbis is a general-purpose compressed audio format for storing and playing digital music. It is comparable in quality to other formats such as the popular MP3. However, unlike MP3, it is an open format and it claims to be free from patents. The format originated from the Xiph.Org Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to producing free and open protocols, formats and software for multimedia.

Vorbis is the name of the audio compression scheme and this is contained in Ogg, the name of Xiph.Org's container format for audio, video, and meta-data - hence the name Ogg Vorbis. Vorbis is a lossy codec, i.e., it uses a compression algorithm that discards data in order to increase the compression possible. Ogg is a container also for other formats, including: FLAC (lossless audio), Speex (speech) and Theora (video). The specification for Ogg, Vorbis and these other formats are in the public domain and are completely free for commercial or non-commercial use.

Software and hardware devices that support Ogg Vorbis are steadily increasing in number and may be found on the Vorbis wiki at Xiph.Org.

Office Documents
Office applications are some of the most widely used applications for personal computers in a modernday office. These applications include word-processing, spreadsheets and presentation software. Available on the market are several office applications, e.g. Microsoft Office, WordPerfect Office, OpenOffice.org and Applixware Office. Each of these invariably used different formats for storing their files in the past.

As a result, it was difficult to convert from one file format to another and for one application to read/write a file created by another application. It is thus a real step forward in terms of office interoperability and productivity when OASIS announced that it was recommending the Open Document Format for Office Applications as a standard file format use in office applications.

OpenDocument
OpenDocument is a file format developed by OASIS for storing office documents created by applications such as spreadsheets, word processors, charts and presentations software. It makes use of a royalty-free, open and vendor-independent XML-based format. The format is based on the file format of OpenOffice.org, which was submitted to OASIS to form the basis for the standard. OpenDocument provides a single XML schema for text processing, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing, charting, and mathematical documents. The OpenDocument format has since become an ISO/IEC international standard (ISO/IEC 26300).

Office software which have announced that they will support the OpenDocument format as their primary/native format include the office suites of OpenOffice.org, StarOffice and KOffice.

Open Standards Usage
Table 1 summarizes the usage and penetration levels of the open standards described above in their respective domains. As can be seen, open standards are widely deployed on the Internet and in running Internet-related/derived services and applications. However, for the graphics, multimedia and office applications areas they are still very limited in acceptance. The limited penetration in these domains is a result of the fact that they are dominated by proprietary products like those from Apple and Microsoft that make use of their own proprietary formats and specifications (see the next section on "Comparison of File Formats"). The incentive for these vendors to support open standards or at least make their specifications more open is not strong due to their dominant positions.


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Talk:Horticulture/Artemisia vulgaris

Pagehistory from Artemisia vulgaris
(cur) (last) 09:15, 1 September 2006 JoJan (Talk | contribs) m (Reverted edits by 24.5.196.119 (talk) to last version by Aelwyn) (cur) (last) 02:10, 1 September 2006 24.5.196.119 (Talk) (cur) (last) 02:09, 1 September 2006 24.5.196.119 (Talk) (→Uses) (cur) (last) 02:08, 1 September 2006 24.5.196.119 (Talk) (→Uses) (cur) (last) 16:12, 23 August 2006 Aelwyn (Talk | contribs) (cur) (last) 16:03, 23 August 2006 Aelwyn (Talk | contribs) (PLEASE someone check my english! Related species: about the confusion with A. verlotiorum.) (cur) (last) 22:47, 15 August 2006 203.113.246.162 (Talk) (→Uses - More safely, a pillow of dried mugwort leaves can left under a dreamer's pillow for the same effect.) (cur) (last) 04:19, 7 July 2006 Seneka (Talk | contribs) (+link to polish) (cur) (last) 09:57, 22 June 2006 SB Johnny (Talk | contribs) (invasive) (cur) (last) 20:39, 9 June 2006 Soulkeeper (Talk | contribs) m (+no:) (cur) (last) 11:57, 5 May 2006 63.166.216.16 (Talk) (cur) (last) 16:41, 2 May 2006 169.229.109.114 (Talk) (→Uses) (cur) (last) 16:40, 2 May 2006 169.229.109.114 (Talk) (→Uses) (cur) (last) 16:40, 2 May 2006 169.229.109.114 (Talk) (→Uses) (cur) (last) 09:34, 1 May 2006 MPF (Talk | contribs) m (pic size) (cur) (last) 09:32, 1 May 2006 MPF (Talk | contribs) (more details & refs, rejig) (cur) (last) 08:49, 1 May 2006 MPF (Talk | contribs) m (moved Mugwort to Artemisia vulgaris: sci name; Mugwort to disambig) (cur) (last) 08:48, 1 May 2006 JoJan (Talk | contribs) (links) (cur) (last) 08:46, 1 May 2006 JoJan (Talk | contribs) (editing) (cur) (last) 00:47, 1 May 2006 64.229.14.64 (Talk) (→Warnings) (cur) (last) 14:40, 17 April 2006 141.106.110.56 (Talk) (→Culinary uses) (cur) (last) 12:35, 16 April 2006 200.255.13.17 (Talk) (interwiki: pt) (cur) (last) 18:15, 11 April 2006 Pineapple (Talk | contribs) (it's called chrysanthemum weed in my area, never heard it called anything else until I looked it up.) (cur) (last) 14:24, 23 March 2006 SmackBot (Talk | contribs) m (Delink months and days of week, clean up using AWB) (cur) (last) 12:04, 17 March 2006 JoJan (Talk | contribs) (better image) (cur) (last) 09:00, 14 March 2006 84.174.151.93 (Talk) (→External links - nl:) (cur) (last) 13:42, 10 March 2006 83.208.83.66 (Talk) (cs:) (cur) (last) 21:41, 10 February 2006 70.217.239.48 (Talk) (→Medicinal properties - Added "reputed to be" in "mugwort is reputed to be useful in inducing lucid dreaming and astral travel.") (cur) (last) 12:24, 7 February 2006 128.143.231.156 (Talk) (corrected spelling of "Ukrainian") (cur) (last) 09:40, 4 February 2006 MPF (Talk | contribs) m (copyedit) (cur) (last) 00:03, 4 February 2006 69.253.63.200 (Talk) (Adding more gruit links) (cur) (last) 06:22, 1 February 2006 Gdrbot (Talk | contribs) m (nomialbot — converted multi-template taxobox to ) (cur) (last) 15:31, 8 January 2006 Badagnani (Talk | contribs) (→External links - cat) (cur) (last) 15:39, 7 January 2006 Cacycle (Talk | contribs) (Capitalizing (link) lists as per Wikipedia:List and Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style) (cur) (last) 19:11, 3 January 2006 Biopolyhedron (Talk | contribs) m (cur) (last)  19:10, 3 January 2006 Biopolyhedron (Talk | contribs) m (cur) (last)  15:13, 2 January 2006 Shultz (Talk | contribs) m (cur) (last)  15:12, 2 January 2006 Shultz (Talk | contribs) m (cur) (last)  13:02, 27 December 2005 222.121.95.174 (Talk) (→Culinary uses) (cur) (last) 08:14, 24 November 2005 Edgar181 (Talk | contribs) (links) (cur) (last) 10:48, 16 November 2005 68.23.100.79 (Talk) (→Medicinal properties) (cur) (last) 11:20, 28 October 2005 200.82.208.102 (Talk) (cur) (last) 11:08, 28 October 2005 200.82.208.102 (Talk) (→Culinary uses) (cur) (last) 09:41, 18 October 2005 Richard Barlow (Talk | contribs) (Added link to Lepidoptera list/rm ref to moths in text) (cur) (last) 13:59, 3 September 2005 65.40.185.70 (Talk) (→Medicinal properties) (cur) (last) 05:28, 28 August 2005 84.65.138.189 (Talk) (→External links) (cur) (last) 09:39, 26 August 2005 Cupino (Talk | contribs) (→Medicinal properties - Added reference to moxibustion & a recently published study) (cur) (last) 14:12, 7 August 2005 Adam78 (Talk | contribs) m (+ hu:) (cur) (last) 13:26, 7 August 2005 JoJan (Talk | contribs) (Commons) (cur) (last) 12:10, 7 August 2005 195.56.95.109 (Talk) (cur) (last) 16:36, 10 June 2005 Hippophaë (Talk | contribs) m (fi) (cur) (last) 13:40, 4 June 2005 Gdrbot (Talk | contribs) m (Robot-assisted disambiguation: Linnaeus) (cur) (last) 09:18, 24 May 2005 Gdr (Talk | contribs) (genus is not monotypic, so debold; add binomial) (cur) (last) 03:52, 14 May 2005 CatherineMunro (Talk | contribs) m (Artemisia (plant)) (cur) (last) 20:11, 26 April 2005 Heah (Talk | contribs) m (cat) (cur) (last) 16:55, 23 April 2005 Polyparadigm (Talk | contribs) m (→Culinary uses - wikification) (cur) (last) 14:25, 18 April 2005 Heah (Talk | contribs) m (cat:Herbal & fungal drugs/medicines) (cur) (last) 06:29, 1 April 2005 Richard Barlow (Talk | contribs) (Added ref to V-Pug) (cur) (last) 12:41, 23 March 2005 Richard Barlow (Talk | contribs) (Added ref to Bordered Pug) (cur) (last) 05:47, 21 March 2005 Richard Barlow (Talk | contribs) (Added ref to Wormwood Pug) (cur) (last) 17:18, 10 March 2005 DanielCD (Talk | contribs) m (→Medicinal properties) (cur) (last) 20:38, 26 January 2005 68.107.241.198 (Talk) (→Medicinal properties) (cur) (last) 20:30, 26 January 2005 68.107.241.198 (Talk) (→Medicinal properties) (cur) (last) 20:30, 26 January 2005 68.107.241.198 (Talk) (→Medicinal properties) (cur) (last) 16:38, 19 January 2005 DanielCD (Talk | contribs) m (→External links - Category:Asteraceae) (cur) (last) 06:36, 17 January 2005 62.94.193.15 (Talk) (bg interwiki) (cur) (last) 12:23, 12 January 2005 JoJan (Talk | contribs) (image) (cur) (last) 12:20, 12 January 2005 JoJan (Talk | contribs) (image) (cur) (last) 12:34, 28 December 2004 DanielCD (Talk | contribs) m (Category:Asterales) (cur) (last) 06:09, 28 December 2004 JoJan (Talk | contribs) (link) (cur) (last) 06:02, 28 December 2004 JoJan (Talk | contribs) (Taxobox - new style) (cur) (last) 21:06, 27 December 2004 DanielCD (Talk | contribs) m (Category:Magnoliophyta) (cur) (last) 03:14, 23 December 2004 WormRunner (Talk | contribs) (merged Mugwort (spice)) (cur) (last) 09:27, 12 December 2004 218.216.221.26 (Talk) ((+ja)) (cur) (last) 03:42, 19 November 2004 Hu (Talk | contribs) m ("was used". It does not protect against evil spirits, so it can't be "known" as such.) (cur) (last) 03:40, 19 November 2004 Mark T (Talk | contribs) m (cur) (last)  14:46, 12 November 2004 Stan Shebs (Talk | contribs) (Category:Plants) (cur) (last) 08:58, 15 October 2004 Robbot (Talk | contribs) m (Andre Engels - robot Adding:da) (cur) (last) 06:25, 30 September 2004 Ground (Talk | contribs) m (cur) (last)  02:58, 31 August 2004 82.124.69.174 (Talk) (cur) (last) 17:18, 9 August 2004 JoJan (Talk | contribs) (cur) (last) 16:53, 9 August 2004 JoJan (Talk | contribs) (editing) (cur) (last) 16:52, 9 August 2004 JoJan (Talk | contribs) (merging) (cur) (last) 16:44, 9 August 2004 JoJan (Talk | contribs) (merging) (cur) (last) 16:55, 8 August 2004 Ahoerstemeier (Talk | contribs) ( Artemisia vulgaris) (cur) (last) 07:11, 22 June 2004 Burschik (Talk | contribs) m (added link to mugwort (spice)) (cur) (last) 12:39, 17 June 2004 Eequor (Talk | contribs) m (Categorize.) 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title: Talk:Horticulture/Artemisia vulgaris


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FOSS Open Standards/Comparison of File Formats

This section will list, compare and discuss the degrees of openness and/or lack of openness of several popular file formats. These include file formats for the following application areas:
 * 1) office applications
 * 2) graphics
 * 3) audio
 * 4) video

Microsoft Office Formats
Currently, the most popular office application is Microsoft Office (MS Office). This suite of office software comprises mainly (depending on the type of suite purchased) word processing (MS Word), spreadsheet (MS Excel) and presentation software (MS PowerPoint). Up till version 10 (MS Office 10), the file formats used were binary (i.e. non-plain text) in nature and not publicly published. MS Word, MS Excel and MS PowerPoint use the binary DOC, XLS and PPT formats, respectively, and these are proprietary formats, being owned and controlled entirely by Microsoft.

The file formats for these applications are widely used due to the popularity of MS Office. Other software not from Microsoft, e.g. OpenOffice.org or StarOffice, are able to read and write files using these proprietary formats but the compatibility is incomplete. Competing products cannot be totally compatible with MS Office unless they are provided with the file format specifications by Microsoft.

Some MS Office applications like Word and Excel can save their data in what is known as the Rich Text Format (RTF) file format. This is a non-binary file format that has been developed by Microsoft for crossplatform document interchange. Technical documentation on RTF is published by Microsoft and as many non-Microsoft software support the RTF file format well, it is widely used for document exchange between MS Office and other office applications. However, the RTF format does not completely support the more complicated and sophisticated features found in MS Office, and complex documents may not be properly represented using the RTF format.

With MS Office 11 (MS Office 2003), the option to use a new XML-based file format for Word and Excel was made available. However, these XML-based formats have been criticized in some quarters for being incomplete and immature. They were not available for all the software applications in the suite and some major functionalities were not supported in those available. As a result, the traditional binary MS Office file formats remained in use mainly. In June 2005, Microsoft announced that MS Office 12, due in 2006, will deliver support for a new set of XML file formats called the "Microsoft Office Open XML Formats". The applications that will use these formats by default are Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Office XML Open Format is also being published by Microsoft on a royalty-free basis to the industry. While, potentially, this will make it possible and easier for third-party products to be compatible with MS Office, the file format will still be owned and controlled by Microsoft and, hence, is not open.

In an attempt to allay fears over this and to allow customers, notably corporations and national governments with long-term archival needs, to access the contents of their documents created with MS Office without being dependent on Microsoft, the Office XML formats have been submitted to ECMA International for standardization.

OpenOffice.org and StarOffice Formats
OpenOffice.org (OOo) is a full-fledged Open Source office application suite, comprising word processor, spreadsheet, presentation software, graphics editor and a database program (available in OOo version 2 only). The original file formats used by OOo were XML-based. As there were several files associated with a single document, all the files were compressed and stored as a single zip-compressed file. OpenOffice.org is available on multi-platforms, e.g. GNU/Linux, MS-Windows, Mac OS X, etc., and offers multi-lingual support. It is compatible with all other major office suites. In particular, it is able to read and write MS Office file formats. The degree of compatibility is very good though not complete.

The OpenOffice.org file format was submitted to OASIS to form the basis for a new standard for office applications and this resulted in OASIS coming up with the OpenDocument Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) v1.0 in May 2005. The OpenDocument Format has also been accepted as an international ISO/IEC standard (ISO/IEC 26300).

New versions of OOo as well as other office suites like KOffice and StarOffice now support OpenDocument as their native file formats. This will significantly improve the interoperability of office software and enhance document exchange. What is most important though is that all these office applications now use a standard open file format for storing their data. The OpenDocument format is not owned or controlled by a single vendor, instead it falls under the ambit of OASIS, an open standards body. Users can, thus, be assured that they will have access to their documents and data from a variety of software.

StarOffice shares the same code base as OOo but it is released under a proprietary commercial license. In addition to the core functionalities of OOo, it also comes with some proprietary and third-party modules, e.g. the Adabas B database and some proprietary clip art galleries and templates. StarOffice uses and supports the same file formats as OpenOffice.org.

Adobe's Portable Document Format
PDF is a file format developed by Adobe Systems, Incorporated for secure and reliable electronic document distribution and exchange. The format is able to preserve the look and integrity of the original document, regardless of the application and platform used to create it even if it contains complex combinations of text, graphics and images. As such, the PDF format is very useful as a format for multiplatform document exchange and distribution and for sharing information. However, one major drawback of PDF is that it is an end-form format, i.e., it is not suitable for modifying or re-writing its contents.

The PDF format is a standard set and controlled by Adobe. It also contains several patents owned by Adobe but licensed royalty-free for use. Older versions and subsets of PDF (e.g. ver 1.4) have been adapted as ISO standards (e.g. PDF/X for printing and graphics, ISO 15930, and PDF/A for long term preservation of electronic documents, ISO 19005). However, the industry mainly makes use of the published PDF specifications from Adobe rather than the ISO standards in implementations of software to use PDF. The specifications for the PDF format is publicly published by Adobe and it can be implemented without restrictions by anyone (provided that there are no objections from Adobe). As a result, a variety of software on many different platforms is available that can read the PDF format, and a (smaller) number of applications that can write out the contents of a document in PDF.

Due to its popularity and wide support, PDF can be considered a de facto standard as a file format for information exchange and sharing but since it is created, owned and controlled by Adobe Corporation, it does not meet the technical definition of an open standard. The PDF specification are actively being developed by Adobe with no means of open participation by interested parties and control of the specification always lies in the hands of Adobe. While the specs are openly available there are specific constraints in the implementation of the features in the specs. Thus, Adobe can, when it sees fit, impose specific constraints on another party attempting to make use of the specification. The recent decision by Adobe not to allow Microsoft to include as a native option in its MS-Office 12 software to enable a user to save or export the contents in PDF format is a very clear example of this!

Graphics/Image File Formats
A picture is worth a thousand words, as the saying goes. It is not surprising then that, with the advent of powerful desktop systems that are able to display high resolution graphics, images are being utilized more and more to convey information. Modern computer systems use what is known as raster graphics to display an image on the video screen. A raster graphics image, digital image, or bitmap, is a data file or structure representing a generally rectangular grid of pixels, or points of colour, on a computer display monitor. Each point or pixel on the screen is represented by a value denoting its colour and this bitmap is stored in memory. Using this bitmap, the entire screen is repainted 30 or more times per second by the video device resulting in the human eye seeing the image being displayed on the screen. There are many ways to create and store this raster graphics image file and so if we are to be able to exchange and share useful graphical information there is a need to have a format that is supported on multiple platforms and by various graphics software.

Many graphics file formats in use today are proprietary by nature, being derived and tied to the software used to create them. There are some formats that have gained wide acceptance as de facto standards and a few of these have emerged as open graphic file formats.

GIF
GIF is a bitmap image format that is widely used on the World Wide Web, especially in its early days as this format resulted in small graphic file sizes. Images stored as GIF files are generally limited to 256 colours. The GIF format makes use of the LZW compression algorithm that was patented in the USA by Unisys. After the GIF format found widespread use on the Web, Unisys asked for royalty payments for all software that utilizes GIF (this patent has since expired in the USA, in 2003). This led to the diminished use of GIF and also to the creation of alternatives to it, notably the PNG format.

GIF is still used for simple animated images as this is not supported by PNG.

PNG
The PNG format was created as an alternative to GIF when Unisys decided to enforce its software patent on LZW data compression that was used in the then popular GIF format. The PNG format, like the ZIP format, makes use of the unpatented DEFLATE compression algorithm. PNG is an extensible file format for the lossless, portable, well-compressed storage of raster images. It offers indexed-colour, grayscale, and true colour image support, plus an optional alpha channel for transparency. It is fully streamable with a progressive display option making it useful for online graphics display in Web pages. It also boasts robust features, providing both full file integrity checking and simple detection of common transmission errors.

PNG is supported by all major graphics software and is now very widely used. It has become an open file format standard and it is a W3C recommendation as well as an ISO international standard (ISO/IEC 15948).

XPM
The XPM (XPixMap) format is a de facto standard for creating icon pixmaps for use in GUIs based on the X Window System. It consists of an ASCII image format and a C library. The XPM format defines how to store colour images (X Pixmap) in a portable way while the associated library provides a set of functions to store and retrieve images to and from XPM format data.

TIFF
The Tagged Image File Format (TIFF) is a file format for digital images. It is a specification that is now owned by Adobe Systems, Incorporated. TIFF is widely used in image applications in the publishing industry and also supported by most image scanning and editing software. The specifications for the TIFF format is publicly published by Adobe and it can be implemented without restrictions by anyone. As a result, there is available software on many different platforms that can read and write the TIFF format. It has become a de facto standard graphics format for high colour depth (32-bit) graphics.

TIFF/IT, which is based on TIFF, is a specification for the exchange of digital advertisements and complete pages (e.g., newspapers, magazines). This has been made an ISO standard (ISO 12639) as a media independent means for pre-press electronic data exchange.

JPEG JFIF
JPEG is a standardized image compression mechanism from the Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG). The file format that employs this compression is JFIF (JPEG File Interchange Format) and JPEG JFIF is what people generally mean when they refer to "JPEG" The JFIF file format was created by the Independent JPEG Group (IJG) for the transport of single JPEG-compressed images.

The JPEG compression uses a lossy mechanism for compressing colour or greyscale images. It works well on natural, real-world scenes like photographs, naturalistic artwork and similar material but it does not fare too well on lettering, simple cartoons or line drawings. The basic JPEG format is the most common format used for storing and displaying photographic images on the Web. One reason for this popularity is that the amount of compression can be adjusted to achieve the desired trade-off between file size and visual quality. The JPEG compression is now an ISO standard – ISO/IEC 10918 Parts 1–4. There are potential patent issues with JPEG, especially with some of its optional features, namely arithmetic coding and hierarchical storage and so for this reason, these optional features are seldom used on the Web.

SVG
Unlike other file formats listed above that are meant for raster graphics, the SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) format is meant for vector graphics, i.e. the use of geometrical primitives such as points, lines, curves, and polygons to represent images in computer graphics. SVG consists of an XML-based file format and a programming API for graphical applications. It is a W3C recommendation and is starting to become a popular choice for including graphics in XML documents. As an SVG document can include raster images such as JPEG and PNG, it can be used to add raster and mixed vector/raster graphics to XML documents.

The SVG format is important as it offers a way based on open standards to render graphics optimally on all types of devices. While currently the usage of SVG usage on the Web is somewhat limited, this should change in due course as more Web browsers support it natively. For the mobile phone industry, it has become the basis for its graphics platform with the publication of the SVG Mobile profile targeted at resource-limited devices such as mobile handsets and PDAs.

Audio File Formats
There are two major groups of audio file formats:
 * 1) those using lossless compression, e.g. like WAV, FLAC
 * 2) those using lossy compression, e.g. MP3, Ogg Vorbis, WMA, AAC

In the lossless compression of a piece of data, nothing is lost during the compression and the original data is restored upon uncompressing. In lossy compression, some data is lost during compression and upon uncompressing the data is not identical to the original but possibly close to it. Lossy compression is used mainly in the compression of multimedia data like audio or video where the loss of some details is tolerable under certain conditions, e.g., the human eye is unable to discern the loss in certain details of an image or video.

WAV
WAVEform audio format (WAV) is a Microsoft and IBM audio file format for storing audio on PCs. It is the main format used on Microsoft Windows systems for raw audio storage. The WAV format is most commonly used with an uncompressed, lossless storage method (pulse-code modulation) resulting in comparatively large audio files. Today, the WAV audio format is no longer popular being superseded by other more efficient means of audio storage.

FLAC
Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC) is a popular lossless audio format with compression designed specifically for audio data streams, achieving compression rates of 30–50 percent. The format specification is publicly available and forms part of the FLAC Open Source project. It is supported by a growing list of audio software and devices.

MP3
MPEG-1 audio layer 3 (MP3) is a popular lossy compression audio format. The MP3 specification was set by the Motion Pictures Experts Group (MPEG), a working group of ISO/IEC charged with the development of video and audio encoding standards. The compression scheme and format for MP3 forms part of the MPEG-1 video and audio compression standard specifications and is an ISO standard, ISO/IEC 11172-3.

MP3 is one of the most popular audio file formats in use today. Music files encoded with MP3 are particularly popular on music exchange and download sites on the Internet due, in part, to the relatively small size of such files and the wide availability of free software on PCs that allow easy creation, sharing, collecting and playing of MP3 files.

WMA
Windows Media Audio (WMA) is a lossy compression audio file format developed by Microsoft. It is a proprietary format but is widely used and supported due to the popularity of the MS Windows platform.

AAC
Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) from MPEG is a lossy data compression scheme intended for audio streams. It was designed to provide better quality at the same bit-rate than MP3, or the same quality at lower bitrates (and hence smaller file sizes). The compression scheme and format for AAC forms part of the MPEG2 video and audio compression standard specifications and is an ISO standard, ISO/IEC 13818-7. This MPEG-2 AAC specification makes use of patents from several companies and a patent license is needed for products that make use of this standard.

The newer MPEG-4 standard also specifies an audio compression technology that incorporates MPEG-2 AAC. This is known as MPEG-4 AAC, and is an ISO standard, ISO/IEC 14496-3.

Apple's popular iTunes service and iPod products have music available in AAC and this has led to an upsurge in the popularity of AAC despite the required patent license royalty payments.

RealAudio
RealAudio is a proprietary audio format developed by RealNetworks for low bandwidth usage. It was first introduced in 1995 and it became popular especially for streaming audio, i.e., the audio is being played in real time as it is downloaded. Many radio stations use RealAudio to stream their programmes over the Internet.

Ogg Vorbis
Ogg Vorbis is a compressed audio format that is believed to be free of patents and royalty payments. The format originated from the Xiph.Org Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to producing free and open protocols, formats and software for multimedia.

Ogg Vorbis uses the Vorbis lossy audio compression scheme. The audio data is wrapped up in the Ogg container format, the name of Xiph.org's container format for audio, video, and meta-data – hence the name Ogg Vorbis. The Ogg Vorbis specification is in the public domain and is completely free for commercial or non-commercial use. There is growing support for the Ogg Vorbis format from software and hardware devices as well as online audio services.

Video Formats
In order that a multimedia experience can be enjoyed properly by all without any discrimination, it is important that there exist multi-platform and multi-software support for it. This underlies the important role that open standards play in relation to video formats and technologies.

Video data's storage involves more than just finding an efficient means to store raw data; other data like tags, menus and possible media manipulation information need to be stored too. There may also be a need to store audio data as video frequently has sound associated with it. Also, the data stream is usually not stored in its raw form, it is transformed into a form more suitable for storage or transmission. A type of file called a container is used to store the data and associated information and a codec is utilized for encoding and decoding the data stream. It is important that the format of the container file as well as the codec that is supported by it follow open standards.

Almost all video containers popular today are proprietary. This is due to the popularity of Apple's QuickTime and Microsoft's Windows Media framework multimedia technologies. Some of these formats, through widespread usage, have emerged as de facto standards but remain proprietary formats all the same.

AVI
Audio Video Interleave (AVI) is a video container format from Microsoft containing both audio and video data. It is a Resource Interchange File Format (RIFF) file specification used with applications that capture, edit, and play back audio-video sequences. It enjoys widespread support and it is the most common container format for audio/video data on the PC.

ASF
Advanced Systems Format (ASF) is Microsoft's proprietary container designed for streaming. The codec is not specified in ASF but the most common ones are Windows Media Audio (WMA) and Windows Media Video (WMV). The ASF container structure is patented in the United States.

MOV
The MOV container is from Apple Computer's QuickTime multimedia architecture and technology. This video file format is openly documented and available for anyone to use royalty-free. As a result, there are several non-Apple video player software available which can play QuickTime video files. The proprietary Sorenson codec is usually used with QuickTime. The QuickTime format was used as the basis of the MPEG-4 MP4 container standard (see entry on MP4 below).

MP4
MPEG-4 Part 14 (MP4) is a container specified as part of the MPEG-4 international standard, ISO/IEC 14496-14. MP4 is designed to support streaming, editing, local playback, and interchange of content. Its design is based on the QuickTime format.

Ogg
The Ogg container uses a bitstream format to encapsulate data from one or more sources. It can handle both audio and video data and while the codecs are not specified, there are several open codecs associated with the Ogg project, including Vorbis (see above) for lossy compressed audio, FLAC for lossless compressed audio, Speex for speech and Theora for video.

The Ogg format has been published as an IETF document, RFC 3533.

MPEG Compression formats
MPEG has developed several standards pertaining to video technology that are used by many digital video products on the market. The MPEG video codecs are specified in the following ISO standards:
 * 1) MPEG-1 Part 2 (ISO/IEC 11172-2)
 * 2) MPEG-2 Part 2 (ISO/IEC 13818-2)
 * 3) MPEG-4 Part 2 (ISO/IEC 14496-2)
 * 4) MPEG-4 Part 10 (ISO/IEC 14496-10)

The MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 standards make use of numerous patented technologies and the vendors of commercial products and services that use them are expected to pay patent licensing royalties.

MPEG-1 Part 2
The MPEG-1 standard that specifies the MP3 audio codec also specifies a video codec for non-interlaced video signals. This codec can be used for compressing video sequences, both 625-line and 525-lines, to bit rates of about 1.5 Mbit/s. It is used in the Video CD (VCD) specifications and the picture quality is comparable to that found for the VHS video cassette recorder.

MPEG-2 Part 2
The MPEG-2 standard specifies a video codec for interlaced and non-interlaced video signals. MPEG-2 video is not optimized for low bit-rates (less than 1 Mbit/s), but outperforms MPEG-1 at 3 Mbit/s and above. The MPEG-2 video codec is backward compatible with the MPEG-1 codec. MPEG-2 is widely adopted for video broadcasting (e.g., direct broadcast satellite and cable TV), filmmaking, and DVD discs. MPEG-2 has a lot of market acceptance and a very large installed base.

MPEG-4 Part 10 (H.264/AVC)
This video coding standard is the same as the ITU-T H.264 recommendation and the technology is also known as Advanced Video Coding (AVC). It contains several innovative features that allow it to compress video more efficiently than earlier MPEG codecs. It also possesses more flexibility, which allows it to accommodate applications in a wide variety of environments.

This is a new standard and it represents the current state-of-the-art in the series of MPEG video compression standards. It is rapidly gaining adoption in a wide variety of applications and digital broadcasting and TV systems. Apple Computer has integrated H.264 into Mac OS X version 10.4 (Tiger), as well as QuickTime version 7 while x264 is a FOSS free library for encoding H.264/AVC video streams. H.264 decoders for Windows, GNU/Linux and Macintosh as well as video servers and authoring tools are available from a number of vendors.

Sorensen
The Sorenson codec is a proprietary video codec from Sorenson Media and used by Apple's QuickTime.

Windows Media Video
This is a set of proprietary streaming video technologies developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows Media framework. It is the codec usually used in an AVI or ASF container and has support for digital rights management facilities. Microsoft has submitted WMV Version 9 to the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) for approval as a standard under the name "VC-1".

Theora
This is a video codec from Xiph.org Foundation as part of the Ogg project. It is based on patented technology but it has been irrevocably given a royalty-free license to use the patents in the codec. The Theora codec is released under a Berkley Software Distribution (BSD) FOSS license and it is available freely for commercial or non-commercial use.