WPD Files

File extensions identify the type of computer file. WPD files, although not as common as they once were, are still recognized by many computer users familiar with word processing programs.

Identification

A WPD file extension indicates that the file is a Corel WordPerfect document.

History

WordPerfect is a word processing program developed in 1979 at Brigham Young University. The program was designed for a manufacturer of computer systems called Data General Corporation. WordPerfect reached its height in the late 1980's and early 1990's, during which time it became the standard for word processing. In the mid 1990's, it fell from its place in the market and was replaced by Microsoft Word, which became available for free in PCs with Microsoft Windows.

WordPerfect in the Market

WordPerfect is still the preferred program of law offices. Much of the program is now tailored to the needs of the legal profession, where it now dominates that market. Legal secretaries and admins are required to have knowledge of WordPerfect.

Flexibility

WPD files may be opened by Corel WordPerfect, Open Office, or Neo Office (Open Office for Macs). WPD files may also be opened by the Microsoft Word Converter pack.

Fun Fact

The extension for WordPerfect has not always been .WPD. WordPerfect has previously used the extensions: .WP, .WP4, .WP5, .WP6 and .WP7. In the beginning, WordPerfect documents had no extension.

Graphic and web designers use fonts in countless projects. In fact, the font can say just as much as the words it displays. While some people or programs use fonts based on design, some fonts works better because of function. Bitmapped fonts are more popular in some applications because of their specific function.

Specifications

Fonts.com defines a bitmapped fonts as a "set of symbols in a specific design (typeface) and size (such as 10 point), in which each symbol is represented as a pattern of dots or small square or rectangular elements called pixels." You can recognize bitmap fonts because you can usually count the pixels in the letter shapes.

Other Names

Bitmapped fonts may be known by several names, including bit-mapped fonts, bitmap fonts, bit map fonts, raster fonts and sometimes pixel fonts. Amateur graphic designers used the latter title when bitmap fonts were especially popular in the early 2000s. Sites such as DaFont group bitmap fonts in with "screen" and "small" fonts as well.

Popular Fonts

Common bitmap fonts include Silkscreen, 04b_03 (and related fonts), Redensek, Bit Trip 7 and Visitor. Many of these fonts are available for free from DaFont.

Applications

Older printers which printed each pixel on the paper used bitmap fonts. Bitmapped fonts are also common on older computer monitors where users can identify the specific pixels. Many video games, whether arcade or console, used bitmapped fonts, including Super Mario Bros. 3.

Bitmap fonts are common in web projects, too. Kirupa.com explains that bitmap fonts work well in Flash applications because the fonts do not blur and "pixel fonts are great for Flash sites that need small text that is still legible."

MiniFonts.com explains that bitmapped fonts are "designed so that they look good at small sizes without needing font smoothing."

Use Tips

When working with bitmapped fonts in a graphics program such as Photoshop, you will want to uncheck the "anti-alias" option on your Text toolbar or Options palette. This allows the bitmap font to display crisply with sharp edges.

Choose your font size in pixels, not points, to avoid font distortion. MiniFonts.com recommends setting your image resolution to "72 ppi (pixels per inch)" to imitate the appearance of pixel fonts on a website.

Tag image file format, or TIFF, and bitmap, or BMP, are two types of digital files used to display images. They differ primarily in terms of the ways they organize the data composing the images. TIFF files contain directories that specify the location of every bit of data necessary to display the image while BMP files store their data sequentially. Although this might seems like an arbitrary distinction, it means that the files are suited for completely different tasks. Namely, TIFF files are ideal for print, while BMPs are best suited for screen display.

Print

The sequential manner in which BMPs organize data makes them poorly suited for printing because it necessitates that the whole file be read and stored in memory. In contrast, TIFFs allow for the data they contain to be accessed in random order. This makes it possible to load a certain part of an image without waiting for the entire file to be read. TIFFs can also be compressed to a further extent than BMPs. This helps reduce their file sizes. This is important because printable images require a higher resolution, and thus more pixel data, than images intended for the screen, making their files comparatively larger without compression.

Screen

TIFFs are not as well suited for the screen as BMPs. This is because high-resolution TIFF images contain pixel information that's necessary for print media but extraneous when viewing the image on a display, making them slow to load and view in their entirety. BMPs are for lower resolution images, and thus contain no more information than is necessary to display the images on screen. They index their image data, meaning that instead of storing all RGB color values for every pixel, they store a single index number that refers to colors on a table. This further speeds up the process of displaying the image.

Photos

BMPs work best for clip art, line drawings and other images that do not contain a lot of color information. Digital photographs contain relatively large amounts of color information. This is a problem for BMPs because their compression system can only compress repeated sequences of a given color. In a photo, what might seem to be one color is often many differing shades that a BMP would be unable to compress, resulting in a large file. TIFFs identify patterns of colors and store these patterns. Thus they generate a system for compression specific to each photo, allowing them to always compress a photo to some degree.

Web

Neither format is optimized for the Web. BMPs lack of color support has made them obsolete for most online purposes. TIFFs tend to be large compared to standard Web formats like PNG and JPEG files. This is because their compression system, while better than that of BMP files, is not always supported. In these cases the files become even larger and less manageable

Working in Adobe Photoshop can yield large files, especially when you create high-resolution four-color process documents for prepress use or ultra-large graphics destined to create trade-show displays and posters. While you probably save some of your work in JPEG format -- when its lossy compression isn't a consideration -- you may wish you had compression options that didn't discard image data. Photoshop's lossless ZIP compression capabilities may offer the file reduction you want.

Making Files Smaller

File compression schemes fall into two basic categories: lossy and lossless. JPEG, the best-known lossy compression scheme, serves as a popular file format for crafting Web graphics, especially those that include photographic imagery. Its file-reduction capabilities also lead to its biggest drawback: It achieves its thrifty document sizes at the expense of image data you can't recapture once you save a JPEG or other lossy file format. When image quality serves as your priority but image size becomes a consideration, Photoshop also can save specific file types with lossless compression applied. As you save TIFF files from Photoshop, you can choose to apply LZW or ZIP compression. Photoshop PDF files also qualify for ZIP compression.

Which Compression Option?

If you use your Photoshop images only in Photoshop itself or in other Adobe Creative Suite applications, including InDesign and Illustrator, you can select any file-saving options you wish without considering anything other than their ability to reduce your file sizes. If you work with other programs, such as QuarkXPress, Microsoft Word or Microsoft Publisher, you may want to forego image compression altogether in the name of third-party compatibility. These considerations especially apply if you send your files to other people and can't control how or in what applications they use your graphics.

ZIP Compression

ZIP compression offers lossless file reduction. Its algorithms seek out areas of document redundancy to achieve file-size savings. As a result, its ability to achieve significant file reduction proves most effective when your images contain solid areas of flat color. Graphics you create, as opposed to those you capture with a camera or scanner, offer the greatest potential for ZIP compression because their subject matter is most likely to include the kinds of color areas best suited to this compression method.

Byproducts of Lossless Compression

If you choose to apply ZIP compression to your Adobe Photoshop output, you may notice that other applications into which you import or place your files require more time to complete the process of accessing these graphics. Experiment with ZIP compression to see how thoroughly it's supported in the scenarios for which you create images in Photoshop. Consider substituting LZW compression -- Lemple-Ziv-Welch, named for the three computer scientists who invented and refined it -- if it proves more compatible with your uses than ZIP compression.

Professionals use spreadsheets widely across the private, public and educational sectors. They are tools that allow efficient methods of storing and manipulating large amounts of data. Among the different formats for storing spreadsheet data are XLS and CSV.

FIle Format Defined

A file format is a specified pattern of storing data so programs can read in the data and make sense of it in the way that you originally authored it. In order to read a specific data file, an application has to be programmed to understand what the data in a given file format means.

XLS

XLS (.xls) is the file format, and corresponding file extension, for Microsoft's spreadsheet program, Excel. The file format has the capacity to store raw data, equations, graphs, and specialized data formats such as dates and times. While the format was designed by Microsoft with its own spreadsheet program in mind, the .xls format is readable by the open source software suite, OpenOffice, as well as Google's document program. Microsoft released a new version of the XLS format, .xlsx, with Microsoft Office 2010.

CSV

CSV, or comma separated values, is a much simpler format than XLS. The format consists of entries of data, either numbers or characters, separated by commas (as the title suggests). The space before each comma represents a single cell and the layout of data entries within the document matches the layout of the spreadsheet. The document cannot store the complex data types that XLS can, nor can it store graphs, but the format is universally recognizable due to its simplicity.

Software Development

XLS and CSV formats present unique challenges to software developers. It is easy to write source code that reads and writes data in the CSV format because it requires little code and no special format libraries. However, the format still suffers from a limited capacity to store complex data. While the XLS format can handle more complex data types, developers need to use special, language specific, libraries to read and write data into that format.

XML stands for thre Extensible Markup Language. It's a standard for writing data files and exchanging data between incompatible applications. XLS is a file extension used for spreadsheets produced by Microsoft Excel. On initial consideration, the two abbreviations describe technologies that have nothing in common. However, there's a link between them.

File Extensions

XLS is a file extension. A file extension is a suffix appended to the base name of a computer file. The two parts of the file name are separated by a dot. Usually the file extension is three or four characters long. Its purpose is to give a quick idea of the contents of a file so you or the operating system can work out which application is needed to process the file. The Windows operating system uses the file extension to associate computer files with applications. Thus, if you double-click on a file in a directory, Windows knows which application to open. The XLS file extension is an abbreviation for Excel spreadsheet.

Microsoft Office

Microsoft markets Excel as part of Microsoft Office. Other elements in the package are Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint. The company introduces new versions of the productivity suite periodically. When it created Microsoft Office 2007, it changed the output formats of its component programs. The old format for Excel spreadsheets, with the XLS file extension, was stored in a binary format. The new format was based on a version of XML called Open XML. To distinguish between old spreadsheets and the new format, which are now called workbooks, Microsoft changed the Excel default file extension to XLSX.

Open XML

The Open XML format is a plain text format championed by Microsoft and published as a common public standard. It's the aim of Microsoft to use Open XML for all data exchange methods between applications. As Office products evolved, the ability to exchange data between programs and integrate elements of one program's output in the output of another became a priority for the company. Storing data from its different programs in the same format greatly advances this strategy.

New Format

The new output format from Excel stores data in the XML format. Data is held in its original state in plain text with tags in angle brackets -- "<>" -- signifying different fonts, layout objects or status changes in each line. XML is closely based on HTML Web programming language. The spreadsheet contains a series of cells that XML stores in a similar fashion to a HTML table. Once Excel generates the XML file, it passes through a second phase, which compresses it to form the XLSX format.

A file extension is a suffix to a computer file name. It is separated from the base name by a dot. There is no global mechanism for ensuring uniqueness of file extensions, so several different file types can carry a common file extension. The XLSM file extension, however, is specific to Microsoft Excel.

Excel

Microsoft Excel is the most widely used spreadsheet program in the world. It was first released for Apple Mac computers in 1984 and for PCs in 1987. With Microsoft's powerful marketing, it soon became the leader in its software category. Purchases of Excel increased when the company bundled together a range of its products into a package. This was called Microsoft Office and included Word, Microsoft's word processing program.

Office 2007

The release of Office 2007 brought a major change to the output format of all Microsoft Office components. Before Excel 2007, the program stored output in a binary format and used the XLS file extension. Since the 2007 version of Excel, the main output type is an XML (Extensible Markup Language) format. The default file extension for Excel spreadsheets was changed to XLSX to distinguish it from the older format. XLSX files are different from XLS files in another respect -- they cannot hold macros. Microsoft created the XLSM file extension for a macro-enabled XML Excel file.

Open XML

XML is a plain text format that uses tags to indicate changes in fonts or layout. It looks very similar to HTML, Hypertext Markup Language, which is the language in which most web pages are written. Microsoft developed an open standard for the language and called it Open XML. This is the basis of the XLSM and XLSX file formats. However, before a file is saved in these formats, Excel compresses the file.

Macros

The XLSM file extension was created specifically for files able to store macros. A macro is a recorded sequence of steps of commands. The user creates a template with fields and then records a macro of all the actions to be performed on that template to produce a new document. Macros usually rely on some external data source. Using different data on the formulas contained in the template produces different results in the spreadsheet each time the file is opened and the macros are run.

A file extension is the second part of a computer file name. The first part is called the base name and the two parts of the file name are separated by a dot ("."). The file extension is usually a three- or four-letter abbreviation of the contents of the file or the application that handles it. The .xlsm file name is one of the file types produced by Excel, the spreadsheet program that's part of Microsoft Office.

Excel

Since its introduction, Microsoft Excel evolved to become the most widely implemented spreadsheet program in the world. Excel was developed by Microsoft and launched in 1985 for Apple Macintosh computers. It was the first spreadsheet program with a "point and click" graphical user interface. Other programs before Excel used keyboard entry. Microsoft continued to evolve the spreadsheet package and added it into a suite of programs known as Office. Microsoft develops all components in step, ensuring that all the Office programs can exchange data and use the same file formats.

Earlier File Extension

The file extension for an Excel spreadsheet was .xls. This was a binary format file and endured until the release of Office 2007, when Microsoft reorganized all of the Office programs to use an XML output format. At that point, the default file extension for Excel files changed from .xls to .xlsx.

Extensible Markup Language

All Microsoft Office programs now save output in the Extensible Markup Language, better known by the abbreviation XML. All of Office's standards output files changed to have an "X" added at the end. There was one other important change added to all Office components. The standard XML format for each program was not able to store macros, as had their binary predecessors. For each application, Microsoft introduced a secondary format for including macros in the saved file. All of these formats had an "M" appended to the original file extension. This created the .xlsm file extension.

Macros

A macro is a stored set of commands. The system of creating macros gives little scope for including procedural programming constructs, like branching and looping. They are not intended to be used to create programs, but to automate file handling where the same series of operations need to be performed on a number of spreadsheets containing data in the same cells.

ODS has a few meanings in relation to Excel files. If you see the file extension ".ods" at the end of a filename, it represents the open document spreadsheet format. ODS can also stand for "Output Delivery System," a Web programming markup language similar to HTML or XML. Documents using this language can be assigned to open in Excel, but will have .xls or .csv file extensions. The open document format is most likely what you will encounter with shared documents for Excel.

Open Source Documents

Open source office programs such as Open Office and Star Office use ODS file extensions for their spreadsheet programs. This stands for "Open Document Spreadsheet." ODS files are compatible with basic Excel features, as both are based on the same type of programming. You can save Excel 2010 files directly to ODS through the Microsoft Office software, but this action can strip incompatible features from your spreadsheets.

Compatibility

If Excel has trouble opening a spreadsheet with an ODS file extension, try exporting the file to XLS, XLSX or CSV format in Open Office or the program that originated the file. Excel 2003 and earlier versions may also require a software add-in to open ODS worksheets. Advanced formatting features in Excel may not work with ODS files. Security features like worksheet protection are only partially supported by ODS file types, and some formulas may not convert properly.

Output Delivery System and Excel

You can create a file in ODS programming language that will open in Excel by assigning an XLS or CSV extension to your file in an ODS editor. A preview will open in Excel if these files use Excel as their default program on your computer. If you save the file to Excel and work on it with Excel's editing tools rather than an ODS editor, the file may no longer be ODS compatible, as Excel uses a different programming language. Excel can be a useful tool for examining ODS data used to create Web pages, but the programming language is not native to Excel and can cause problems such as removing zeroes from numbers or displaying text incorrectly. Novice users may prefer using a dedicated Web text editor for examining ODS documents, rather than assigning them to Excel.

Considerations

Any time you work with a file type outside of its native program, whether it is an open document spreadsheet or an output delivery system file, expect to have some data loss and unsupported features. Each software program is designed to work with a specific file type or types, so items created with one program may include features that the other program simply does not know how to interpret. Always save a copy of your original file in its native program, whether that is Open Office, Excel or any other software. This allows you to maintain uncorrupted data in case a conversion does not go as expected.

Starting with Microsoft Excel 2007, the default file extension for spreadsheets is .xlsx instead of the older .xls. The "x" at the end stands for "XML," which means Extensible Markup Language -- a method of encoding documents. Although you will typically not need to view the XML used to produce the spreadsheet, if you do it will appear as a series of headers, tags and data. This text then becomes the spreadsheet you see when you open Excel.

Automatic Compression

If you've ever downloaded a "zipped" file from the Internet, you know that it is considerably smaller than the contents inside the file. The .xlsx file type allows Excel to automatically compress files by "zipping" them when you close the program and "unzipping" the files when you open the program. This means that you will save hard drive space with the new file format as the program automatically compresses all the files.

Data Recovery

If you open an .xls file and a warning appears notifying you that the file is corrupt, there is often nothing you can do to view the file contents. As XML stores information as separate containers within the file -- even if one section is corrupted, you can still open the file and view the information that has not been damaged.

Privacy Features

XML saves certain information separately from your document, such as the comments, notes and hidden rows and columns. If you want to share the document with another person or organization, the .xlsx file extension allows you to make these sections invisible to the other party. This can be helpful if you need to hide sensitive information but don't want to create an entirely new spreadsheet.

Macro Detection

Macros are pieces of Visual Basic script that can be run from inside a spreadsheet. While often helpful, they can be used maliciously. The .xls file extension doesn't let you know if any macros are present in the spreadsheet, but the .xlsx file format does, because it cannot be used with documents that contain macros. Spreadsheets with macros will save as .xlsm files by default.

When Mac released its Aperture software in 2005 as a native-Mac alternative to Adobe, a long-time leader in photo editing software, Adobe returned with its own version of photo editing software, Lightroom. The competition between these two quality products has provided more features for the consumer: Since Aperture's initial release, both companies have released upgrades and dramatic program enhancements.

Aperture Advantages

Aperture allows easy importing of pictures; use a memory card or stick to download images, or hook up your camera via USB or FireWire connection and save images on your computer as you take them. In terms of editing, Aperture allows you to do basic cropping, straightening and exposure. It also includes effects such as Vibrancy, Definition, Vignette and Lift and Stamp to make the image clearer, crisper and sharper. You can edit from any Aperture screen, allowing for greater freedom in image adjustments and editing metadata. Apple's Aperture is full of advantages for the native Mac user: Aperture integrates well with all of OS X, and photos and edits are available from the iWork and iLife suites.

Aperture Disadvantages

Although Aperture is full of features, some see this as a disadvantage. Learning the format could take a long time, and some of the features, such as the virtual organization system, could be frustrating for new users. Aperture's biggest disadvantage is its native Mac compatibility; there is no Windows version.

Lightroom Advantages

Adobe's Lightroom offers many editing options, allowing for quick changes to the whole image or fine, accurate enhancements to one specific area of the picture. In addition, many plug-ins help the user export, edit or share photos with ease and flexibility. Lightroom works well with most camera models, and it permits greater image adjustment, such as chromatic aberration correction. As a product of Adobe, Lightroom synchronizes well with all Photoshop CS4 software; the edits you do elsewhere will show up in Lightroom. Lightroom is available for both Windows and Mac computers.

Lightroom Disadvantages

Lightroom, as part of the CS4 package, offers limited functionality since it is intended for use in conjunction with the other software programs. Scripting is not available in Lightroom, not a problem for novices but a serious flaw for more technologically savvy editors. The search abilities of Lightroom are also limited.

Overall Comparison

Overall, both Lightroom and Aperture offer strong products. The ongoing debate in forums and blogs suggests that neither program is unquestionably superior. However, the Windows user will find more advantages in Lightroom in terms of integration and familiarity. In addition, for a wider array of camera models and image types, Lightroom is superior. For the Mac user, Aperture provides seamless integration with OS X and allows for greater functionality and editing.

Adobe InDesign is a software program used by newspaper and magazine companies to produce fully paginated pages for publication. InDesign also is used by advertising companies, writers and novice designers to create ads, books, fliers, posters, newsletters and other documents that can be distributed. The use of paragraph styles will help keep a document consistent with fonts, font sizes and the overall look of the document. However, there are times when you may want to break from the style.

Paragraph Styles

Paragraph styles allow people to apply a font, point size and other characteristics to the type in selected paragraphs in a document. Instead of changing all these characteristics individually, people can click one paragraph style to perform several functions at one time. Also, if you have styled your entire document and then choose to alter your paragraph style or styles, the changes you make to the styles will filter through the text of the entire document.

Applying a Paragraph Style

To apply a paragraph style, use the typing tool to select all the text you would like to style, click on the paragraph styles panel and select the style. If the panel is not open or docked on the right side of the program interface, click the "Window" menu, select "Styles" and choose "Paragraph Styles." The panel will open and you will be able to choose any style.

Break a Link to Style

You can keep the characteristics of a paragraph style but break the link to the style. You would want to do this if you were going to change the paragraph style to effect all text, but you did not want some selected text to be changed. To break the link to a style, select the text, select the Paragraph Styles panel, click the fly-out menu at the top right corner of the panel and choose "Break Link to Style."

Re-Linking to a Paragraph Style

If you have broken the link to a paragraph style and later decide you would like to apply that paragraph style to your text again or apply a different style to your text, you can select the text and click the paragraph style.