if you would wipe one file format off the face of the earth forever, what would it be?

[Locut0s]

Originally posted by: ironwing

Originally posted by: MovingTarget

Originally posted by: TheKub
.wpd

You Corel motherfuckers can just go to hell!

Hey! Some of us were using WP before Corel came in and redecorated the place! All Feng Shuei and shit now... WordPerfect 5.0 4evah!

Oh, and pdf haters can bite me. Yes, Adobe Reader sucks donkey balls, but there are plenty of alternative programs that read pdf format just fine. It really is useful.

.pdf is really useful if the goal is to bug the crap out of the reader. Let's make a document that looks like a word processing document yet retains none of the redeeming qualities of a word processing document. It will be bloated, difficult to select and copy text from, contain a bizarre layout scheme, and be designed to be opened with a program containing a plethora of totally useless tools.

Accept that's completely the wrong usage for PDF. Sure if that's what you need PDF for it's the wrong format, blame the sender not the format. PDF is for sending documents (regardless of type!!) to people who need to view and print them. It's not for editing them in any way shape or form! The idea is that the user doesn't have to know or care what format the original document was in be it doc,txt,rtf,jpg,xls, or whatever it will open view and print exactly as intended. That's all it's for and it's good at that!

What you hate is Adobe's PDF viewer which DOES suck!

 

[reallyscrued]

Originally posted by: GodlessAstronomer
Now that .mov is natively supported in Windows 7, I'm going to go with .flac - not because it's a bad format, but .flac fanboys piss me off.

Yess, someone had the balls to say it.

 

[Shawn]

.mov

 

[Mark R]

Adobe Digital Editions

Never have I ever come across files that are so difficult to use and unreliable, and part of a file format where files are continually obsoleted so fast that its difficult for suppliers and users to keep up.

I recently ordered a number of rare journal article reprints from the British Library, one of the worlds largest copyright libraries, at great expense. They delivered them as adobe digital editions files. Despite it being only 8 weeks since the last time I had used ADE, my version was obsolete and could no longer open the files. So I updated - unforunately, the new version was so new, it had withdrawn support for the files used by the library, so it too wouldn't open the files, saying that they were too old. So, I got the interim version of the software from a Yarr site (as it had been withdrawn by adobe), and guess what - it wouldn't install - claimed it was too old, and that it could no longer be installed.

In the end I had to write to the library, and have them send me the reprints in TIFF format.

 

[Mark R]

Originally posted by: silverpig
What's the accepted audio standard for divx video then? Cause I've seen ac3 2.0, ac3 5.1, and mp3 with divx. Then there's xvid.

xvid isn't an audio standard - it is purely a video CODEC. If someone wishes to create an xvid video, then they are free to choose whatever audio CODEC they wish.

Divx does have a number of specific 'profiles' which are specified for reasons of compatibility. The recommended audio CODEC to accompany Divx video is mp3, but depending on the stream container format the creator of the video is free to choose any audio CODEC that they like.

In practice Xvid and Divx are totally compatible - they are encode and decode MPEG4 video - in the same way that both photoshop and paint can encode and decode JPEG images.

Not everyone is blameless here, as there are some container formats that require defined audio and video CODECs. E.g. .mp4 files specifically mean MPEG4 video and MPEG4 audio. This is one of the file formats that Divx can produce as default. Except there is a problem with Divx - the MPEG4 video is fine, however, divx somehow forces MPEG1LIII (mp3) audio into the mp4 files. Unsurprisingly, most software complains when trying to use these broken files.

 

[l0cke]

There is some kind of iso read/write program whose name slips my mind right now, and they decided to have their own .iso clone format. It is more efficient so some torrent use it but WTF.

 

[Engineer]

Originally posted by: BW86
.mov

 

[yhelothar]

Originally posted by: zeruty

Originally posted by: vi edit
.docx or whatever the excel version of office '07 is.

Seriously people.....stop freaking sending out documents in office '07 format. Large corporations are notoriously slow in retooling their productivity apps.

I hate having to constantly reply back to all the consultants that we work with asking them for a conventional .doc format.

Get the free file converters from Microsoft, so you can open .docx in Word 2003???

screw that..
http://www.zamzar.com/

 

[smack Down]

Originally posted by: GodlessAstronomer

Originally posted by: smack Down
.pdf and .xml are to totally worthless file formats.

Holy.... fucking.... shit.... surely nobody is this dense.... I'm... I.... just.... I'm speechless.... wow. XML is one of the most important file formats we have. You would be astounded to learn how often XML is used every day of your life to get information to you.

And yet it is still a screwed up format. It is the bastard love child between a text file and object serialization. With the file size of text file and edibility of the binary file.

 

[smack Down]

Originally posted by: Locut0s

Originally posted by: ironwing

Originally posted by: MovingTarget

Originally posted by: TheKub
.wpd

You Corel motherfuckers can just go to hell!

Hey! Some of us were using WP before Corel came in and redecorated the place! All Feng Shuei and shit now... WordPerfect 5.0 4evah!

Oh, and pdf haters can bite me. Yes, Adobe Reader sucks donkey balls, but there are plenty of alternative programs that read pdf format just fine. It really is useful.

.pdf is really useful if the goal is to bug the crap out of the reader. Let's make a document that looks like a word processing document yet retains none of the redeeming qualities of a word processing document. It will be bloated, difficult to select and copy text from, contain a bizarre layout scheme, and be designed to be opened with a program containing a plethora of totally useless tools.

Accept that's completely the wrong usage for PDF. Sure if that's what you need PDF for it's the wrong format, blame the sender not the format. PDF is for sending documents (regardless of type!!) to people who need to view and print them. It's not for editing them in any way shape or form! The idea is that the user doesn't have to know or care what format the original document was in be it doc,txt,rtf,jpg,xls, or whatever it will open view and print exactly as intended. That's all it's for and it's good at that!

What you hate is Adobe's PDF viewer which DOES suck!

Except I don't want to view the document as it was intended I want it formatted to fit the window I'm using.

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: smack Down

Originally posted by: GodlessAstronomer

Originally posted by: smack Down
.pdf and .xml are to totally worthless file formats.

Holy.... fucking.... shit.... surely nobody is this dense.... I'm... I.... just.... I'm speechless.... wow. XML is one of the most important file formats we have. You would be astounded to learn how often XML is used every day of your life to get information to you.

And yet it is still a screwed up format. It is the bastard love child between a text file and object serialization. With the file size of text file and edibility of the binary file.

No, XML is not a "screwed up format." You're clueless.

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: reallyscrued

Originally posted by: GodlessAstronomer
Now that .mov is natively supported in Windows 7, I'm going to go with .flac - not because it's a bad format, but .flac fanboys piss me off.

Yess, someone had the balls to say it.

:laugh: I didn't know .mov is natively supported by Windows 7. I guess it'll be fine with me then. I'm not sure why everyone else hates it so much. No one has really specified.

 

[CKent]

Originally posted by: GodlessAstronomer
Now that .mov is natively supported in Windows 7, I'm going to go with .flac - not because it's a bad format, but .flac fanboys piss me off.

God forbid we don't support Apple :roll:

Quicktime Alternative is a one-time download that solves the assininity of the mov format, it never bugged me that much.

Originally posted by: Fayd

Originally posted by: OUCaptain
.mkv

5200 dual core with 4 gigs of ram and VLC still always has trouble decoding this piece of crap of a format. or I"m doing it wrong.

you're definitely doing it wrong, considering MKV is not one format. it's a container. get a better decoder for whatever the video stream is.

Yeah, it's most likely holding h.264 in too high a bitrate for the cpu.


I'd have to go with pdf. It's common enough that you encounter it a lot, and there isn't really an effective way of dealing with it. 9 times in 10 I'm reading it in firefox, meaning a) It takes forever to load using the plugin and b) I can't ctrl-# to get to other tabs, I have to click on them /lazy

 

[palswim]

Originally posted by: l0cke
There is some kind of iso read/write program whose name slips my mind right now, and they decided to have their own .iso clone format. It is more efficient so some torrent use it but WTF.

Nero? .nrg?
Alcohol? .mds + .mdf?

Yeah, I wish everything was .iso or .bin + .cue, too.

 

[sestrugen]

.dll

 

[TruePaige]

Originally posted by: mugs

Originally posted by: smack Down

Originally posted by: GodlessAstronomer

Originally posted by: smack Down
.pdf and .xml are to totally worthless file formats.

Holy.... fucking.... shit.... surely nobody is this dense.... I'm... I.... just.... I'm speechless.... wow. XML is one of the most important file formats we have. You would be astounded to learn how often XML is used every day of your life to get information to you.

And yet it is still a screwed up format. It is the bastard love child between a text file and object serialization. With the file size of text file and edibility of the binary file.

No, XML is not a "screwed up format." You're clueless.

 

[helpme]

.hqx

Stuffit can stuffit.

 

[Tiamat]

realaudio
quicktime

 

[Sea Moose]

.wma whats the point of this?

 

[TruePaige]

Originally posted by: Sea Moose
.wma whats the point of this?

To piss me off.

 

[Locut0s]

Originally posted by: mugs

Originally posted by: reallyscrued

Originally posted by: GodlessAstronomer
Now that .mov is natively supported in Windows 7, I'm going to go with .flac - not because it's a bad format, but .flac fanboys piss me off.

Yess, someone had the balls to say it.

:laugh: I didn't know .mov is natively supported by Windows 7. I guess it'll be fine with me then. I'm not sure why everyone else hates it so much. No one has really specified.

*looks around* shhh.... Because it's apple.

 

[TipsyMcStagger]

.mov

 

[Chaotic42]

.mov

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

Originally posted by: Chaotic42
.mov

WINNER!

As a sidenote, I wanted to come up with an XML schema for audio files

 

[Kalmah]

I don't think PDF would be that bad if I knew I wasn't going to get a window asking to update EVERY SINGLE FREAKIN TIME that I open one. Just leave me alone!!!!!!!

When I have to open a pdf it's usually because I'm desperate and in a hurry to find something. I don't want to risk having to wait 5 minutes for an update and possibly be prompted to restart my computer. So I always hit cancel.