brainstorming: which formats to use and which to avoid

[Marc Eberhard]

Hi!

On Mon, Jun 11, 2001 at 03:43:25PM +0200, Massimo Nuvoli wrote:
> I think is better to create 3 lists: "all" "partially" and "not" free and
> not patented formats. Free means also for "well documented", or "usable".
> :-)
> 
> I think is better explain why the formats are partially or totally "not
> free".

I fully agree with that. What about...

- free (should be used, if possible)

- not recommended/questionable (should be avoided, if possible)

- non-free (and this implies non-documented, because we should treat the
            documentation as part of the format)

I would propose to put this on a web page instead of a poster, because that
way links can be provided to the format documentation. The entry page could
be a simple table with three columns and the name and typical extensions of
the files. Each entry is a link to a more detailed comment about this
specific format.

I just grabbed through my /etc/mime-magic and sorted the result a bit. I
append it at the end. Would be interesting how much we can say about all
these different formats. A lot of them are probably pretty useless anyway,
but the most important ones (at least for Unix systems) should be included.

Interestingly it doesn't include XML, which I would consider to be a free
format.

Bye,
Marc
_______________________________________________________________________________

email: marc at greenie.net
email: m.a.eberhard at aston.ac.uk, web: http://www.aston.ac.uk/~eberhama/

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