File format resources

This is a list of links to information on file formats for perceivable or renderable content, e.g., sounds, images, text, movies, etc. File formats for compression, encoding or encryption aren't included here.

Where possible, I have tried to give primary sources for file format information, but nothing here is guaranteed.

PDF

• Adobe TIFF specifications
• PDF-X, a restricted form of PDF for prepress data interchange. (Bilingual, English/German)
• PDF-A, a restricted form of PDF for long-term preservation. See also ISO 19005-1:2005.
• ISO 32000, the formal standard based on PDF 1.7.

GIF

• GIF-87 specification
• GIF-89 specification

HTML and XHTML

• HTML 3.2
• HTML 4.0
• HTML 4.01
• HTML 5.0 (working draft)
• XHTML Basic
• XHTML 2.0 (draft)

JPEG

• JPEG File Interchange format (JFIF)

TIFF

• GeoTIFF, a restricted form of TIFF for georeferenced raster imagery
• TIFF-B, an RFC for standardized exchange of black and white (bilevel) images on the Internet.
• TIFF-FX, a restricted form of TIFF for black-and-white and color fax.
• DNG (Digital Negative Format), an Adobe extension of TIFF-EP for raw camera data.

XML

• XML 1.0, fourth edition
• OpenDocument format

Miscellaneous

• AIFF and AIFF-c, Macintosh-oriented documentation
• ICC color profiles
• PNG
• RTF (Rich Text Format)
• SVG 1.2
• UTF-8

General references

• O'Reilly's Graphic file formats FAQ (1997)

Standards organizations

• American National Standards Institute (ANSI)
• Ecma International
• International Color Consortium (ICC)
• ISO
• Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
• Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association (JEITA)

Interesting articles

• Dave Polaschek, The Trouble with Standards
• Ken Milburn, JPEG2000: the Killer Image File Format for Lossless Storage
• Jukka Korpela, Empty elements in SGML, HTML, XML, and XHTML: If you think you really understand HTML syntax, read this!

Collected format information

• Global Digital Format Registry
• Digital Formats for Library of Congress Collections
• Wotsit's Format, programmer's resource on file formats. Information on lots of formats, but mostly stored as Zip archives, so not well suited to casual browsing.