This page contains information about some of the file formats
used on the TDB web pages.
Contents
PDF files
WinZip self-extracting files
MS Word files
PDF files
Much of the documentation for the NEA TDB project is available on the
TDB web pages as Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files. To read PDF
files, you have to have Adobe Acrobat Reader or Adobe Acrobat Exchange
installed on your computer. To read the TDB project documentation PDF
files you have to have Adobe Acrobat Reader (or Exchange) version 3.0
or later installed (version 2.1 is not able to read properly the documents
produced at the NEA). The latest version of Adobe Acrobat Reader can be
downloaded free of charge from the Adobe
website.
PDF was chosen as the preferred format for distribution of finalised
documents for several reasons:
PDF files can be easily created from the original documents of the
TDB project (which are in LaTeX format);
PDF files are compact, meaning that documents can be easily transferred
over the Internet;
Using Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator with the
Acrobat Reader plug-in, you can download only the page you want to look
at without waiting for the whole document to download over the Internet;
In contrast to standard HTML documents, PDF can handle the sometimes
complicated formulae, tables and figures that occur in the TDB reports
and documentations;
PDF, in contrast with HTML, preserves the layout of a document;
PDF is well standardised; unlike for HTML, there is not a plethora
of non-compatible extensions. PDF documents are very portable. Microsoft
Word files are sometimes put forward as a better alternative. However,
Word files exist in many different versions and different languages,
and are not well standardised, although many newer versions of MS Word
can read documents produced by older versions of Word. Sometimes specific
non-English language versions contain non-portable fonts etc. that render
them unreadable with other versions of MS Word. Also, with PDF, one
doesn't run the risk of inadvertently changing information in the files;
PDF documents, when printed, produce high quality hardcopies (provided
that one has access to a high quality printer);
PDF files can be read using freely available software on a wide variety
of computer platforms.
WinZip self-extractable files
These files self-extracting executable files created using WinZip. You
don't need WinZip to look at these files, though, you just download them
to your computer, and click on the file in your file manager. This will
start the extraction procedure to produce the original file. This will
only work, if you are using a Microsoft Windows system. If not, you have
to download the uncompressed file.
Microsoft Word files
The NEA TDB Secretariat currently uses the NT version of MS Word 97,
with servicepack 1 and 2 installed. The servicepacks can be downloaded
from the Microsoft website.
