Digital File types and Formats and the need for Conversion


File formats are a way how the file data is encoded for storage in a computer file. They allow data to be structured within a file and help a software to understand how to read, write and process the data. In computer world different types of formats are designed for different types of data, like images, videos, texts, documents, or for any specific software application. Each type of format is generally associated with a specific file extension, which comes as a suffix at the end of the file name.

There are human readbale file formats, like:
• “.txt”: Contains text data with no specific formatting.
• “.csv”: Contains comma-separated values to store tabular data.
• “.html”: HyperText Markup Language, tagged text content which is used to create web pages.
• “.xml”: Extensible Markup Language, a way to create and share both format and data.
• “.json”: JavaScript Object Notation, a lightweight data-interchange format, easy to read and write.
• “.yaml”: A human-readable data serialization format used to write configuration files.

And then there are various binary file formats, like:
• “.pdf”: Portable Document Format, a versatile file format created by Adobe to present and exchange documents.
• “.doc/.docx”: Microsoft's proprietary Word Binary File Format to store smart and flexible documents.
• “.epub”: Electronic Publication is an e-book file format and is supported by most e-readers.
• “.azw3”: It stands for Amazon Kindle Format 8, the format used in Amazon Kindle devices and Kindle apps.
• “.odt”: Open Document Text format and was created to store data for OpenOffice systems.
• “.rtf”: Rich Text Format targets rich text documents with styled text / images and is supported by most editors.
• “.jpg/.png”: Image file format used to store computer images.
• “base64”: Binary-to-text encoding scheme that transforms data into a set of 64 unique characters for storage and transmission.


Choosing the right format is always essential in the computer world while storing any data, document or even multimedia contents. The major factors that decide the choices are Purpose (if file is meant for human reading or for computer processing), Size (if file size needs to be small, or large to preserve content quality) and Compatibility (if file can be accessible on multiple computer platforms).

Below based on the specific need one can convert files and data from one format to another: