
Patent law, rather than copyright, is more often used to protect a file format. Both strategies require significant time, money, or both therefore, file formats with publicly available specifications tend to be supported by more programs. The latter approach is possible only when a formal specification document exists.

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If the developer of a format doesn't publish free specifications, another developer looking to utilize that kind of file must either reverse engineer the file to find out how to read it or acquire the specification document from the format's developers for a fee and by signing a non-disclosure agreement. Not all formats have freely available specification documents, partly because some developers view their specification documents as trade secrets, and partly because other developers never author a formal specification document, letting precedent set by other already existing programs that use the format define the format via how these existing programs use it. 4.1 Unstructured formats (raw memory dumps)įile formats often have a published specification describing the encoding method and enabling testing of program intended functionality.3.3.8 File content based format identification.3.3.5 PRONOM unique identifiers (PUIDs).
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Other file formats, however, are designed for storage of several different types of data: the Ogg format can act as a container for different types of multimedia including any combination of audio and video, with or without text (such as subtitles), and metadata. Some file formats are designed for very particular types of data: PNG files, for example, store bitmapped images using lossless data compression.

File formats may be either proprietary or free and may be either unpublished or open. It specifies how bits are used to encode information in a digital storage medium. A file format is a standard way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file.
