User:Felix/ontology


 * Abstract (XML, ASN.1) or concrete (HTML, PEM)?

By serialisation method

 * Text-based
 * HTML-based (microformats)
 * JSON-based
 * XML-based
 * YAML-based
 * Binary
 * ASN.1
 * bencode
 * BSON
 * EBML

By content type

 * Executable code
 * Machine code
 * Core dump
 * Executable
 * Dynamically-linked library
 * Object code
 * Bytecode
 * Language
 * Data description language
 * Schema (XML DTD, XSD, SQL DDL, JSON Schema…)
 * Markup language
 * Programming language
 * File container
 * Archive (zip, tar, message/rfc822…)
 * Cryptography
 * Encrypted data
 * Cryptographic key/certificate
 * Signature
 * General compression (gz, bzip2, xz…)
 * File system (FAT, extfs…)
 * Partition map (MBR, GPT…)
 * Data serialisation format (Python pickle…)
 * Wrapping encoding (base64, quoted-printable…)
 * Text and hypertext documents (HTML, RTF…)
 * Page layout (PDF, PostScript, dvi, DjVu, XSL-FO…)
 * Multimedia
 * Audio (WAV, mp3…)
 * MIDI audio
 * Multimedia container (Ogg, Matroska)
 * Video and animation (MP4, GIF…)
 * Static graphics
 * Raster graphics (BMP, PNG, JPEG…)
 * Vector graphics (SVG, WMF…)
 * Subtitles

Some formats may fit several categories at once. SWF could fit in "Video and animation", "Multimedia container" and "Bytecode".

By scope

 * General-purpose
 * Long-term archival
 * Data interchange
 * Internet/network messaging

Per-content type:
 * Raster graphics:
 * Photographic
 * Pixel art
 * Scanned documents