Site Help: Document Formats - The California ISO

Many documents on this site can be downloaded in various formats for viewing and printing off-line. Document formats are indicated with a letter code for the type of format. Below are the types of formats, the letter codes, and an explanation of what they mean. In general, the letter code is the equivalent DOS file extension for that type of file. Apologies to MacIntosh users.

Please note: some sections of the board have documents in specialized formats other than those indicated here. If you have questions regarding these formats, please contact the Webmaster indicating the format in question.

Adobe Acrobat files: PDF

PDF (Portable Document Format) files are manipulated by Adobe's Acrobat. The PDF format is a versatile format that provides many features not found in other formats. For this reason, we are attempting to standardize on the PDF format; however, because many of our source documents are produced in Microsoft Office, some documents will continue to be available in Office formats.

Adobe provides free viewers (the Adobe Acrobat Reader) for PDF files. The viewers are available for many platforms, including Windows, Macintosh, and Unix. Plug-ins are also available to permit direct viewing of Acrobat files on Netscape or Microsoft browsers.

Microsoft Office 97 documents: DOC, XLS, PPT

DOC indicates a document is available in Microsoft Word 97 format; XLS files are Microsoft Excel 97 files; PPT files are created by Microsoft PowerPoint 97. Viewers and/or converters for most formats are available at Microsoft's Web site.

Compressed archives: ZIP

Extraction programs for ZIP files are available from many sources and for most platforms. The Pkware homepage is the definitive source for ZIP information. Programs downloaded from this source are shareware and require payment for continued use.

Info-ZIP is a pkzip compatible program which runs on a number of platforms. It is free.

Delimited Text Files: CSV

Statistical data is often supplied as delimited ASCII text. The exact format will vary depending upon the application for which the file is being supplied. However, these files are standard text files with values separated by a character--most frequently a comma. Records are delimited by a carriage return-linefeed pair.

Templates: TMPL

Historic OASIS data is supplied as an ASCII template file. This is a special format ASCII data file. They can be read with a standard text editor. For more information, contact the OASIS Administrator.

OASIS Data: XML

OASIS data is delivered in an XML format. For details, please see the OASIS site.

AutoCad Drawings: DWG

Some schematics are provided in the original AutoCad file format. These documents require AutoCad or a file viewer capable of viewing AutoCad drawings. Volo View Express is a Free viewer for viewing AutoCad files in your web browser. (> 17 megabytes in size.)