File viewers needed to view electronics documents
The links on my electronics web pages has links to many different types of documents. Some of them are directly viewable using your web browser but some of them need some external browsers.
Document file types
HTML
HTML is the native language of the web so your web browser will show it nicely in your screen. If the page does nto show nicely on your screen try try to get a newer better browser version if you use an olde one.
While viewing the HTML documents is no problem, printing them can be sometimes painful. Espcially some browsers have trouble with printing white text on a black background. If you have problems in getting nice prinouts, you can use the following tips to get a better quality printout:
- If you are using Microsoft Internet Explorer, Click View -> Internet Options, and then click on the Advanced tab. Scroll down to the Printing settings, and be sure the box marked Print background colors and images is unchecked. Internet Explorer will then print black text instead of white.
- If you are using Netscape Navigator, go to the Preferences dialog (Edit -> Preferences), and click on Colors. Set your text and background colors to something that will print well (the default is fine), and put a check the box marked Always use my colors, overriding document. That will change the colors you see on screen, and allow you to print without difficulty.
PDF files are Adobe Acrobat. The Adobe Acrobat Reader Software is freely downloadable for all major platforms from Adobe web site at http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep.html.
Postscript
Some documents and pictures are in Postscript format which is directly printable if you copy this file to Postscript capable printer. If you want to view it in your screen then get free Ghostscript, Ghostview and GSview packages and install it to your computer. For Windows I recommedn you to get GSview package.
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word format (usually .doc extension) has also became quite populat format for distributing documents in the web because Word is very widely used text processing tool in almost everywhere. The Word files in the web are almost all times for Word version 6.0, so you need Word version 6.0 or newer to read them. Some other major text processing packages can also read this format. Be warned that Word documents can contain macro viruses which activate automatically when you use Word to open them. Microsoft has freely downloadable Word file viewer program at their website for those who run Windows but don't have Word.
Microsoft Powerpoint
Microsoft Powerpoint is a popular program for making slide presentations. Powerpoint files usually use file extension ".ppt". That's why there is some presentations on Powerpoint native format in the web. If you don't have Powerpoint program yourself you can try to download free Powerpoint viewer for Windows from Microsoft web site.
Pictures
GIF
All graphical web browsers support this picture format directly.
JPG, JPEG
All graphical web browsers support this picture format directly.
BMP
Standard Windows Bitmap format which is supported by standard Windows grapahics programs. Microsoft Internet explorer can also read this format. All good graphics packages can view this.
PCX
Paintbrush picture format. Windows Paintbrush can read this nicely ans so can many other graphics packages.
PNG
A graphics format designed to bhe a successor for GIF. Support is tarting to appear to web browsers and grpahics programs.
HPGL
HPGL files are files which include command for HP plotters. If you have suitable plotter you can plot those pictures by copying this file to the plotter. All other have to use some viewer like GC-PREVUE, SPLOT (for Windows) or WEBPlotter (web browser plugin for Netscape and MSIE).
The HPGL file can be imported directly into many word-processor programs for viewing. Word for Windows can do this using by selecing Insert and then Picture and then select the HP Graphics Language file format and the file you want view (works at least in Word which comes with Office 95).
HP PCL
PCL is a page description language used by the laser printers made by Hewlett Packard (for example HP Laserjet laser printers). Sometimes the data which is normally sent to the printer is saved to the file so that the documents could be printed on remote site just by copying those files to the PCL capable laser printer.
Packed files
ZIP, zipped files
Those files are packed with PKZIP or compatible program. If you are using windows you can download Winzip shareware from www.shareware.com.
Pkzip packer and unpacker for DOS can be found from almost every FTP site which has MSDOS programs and there are also lots of other zip utilities for DOS (for example take a look at ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/msdos/packing/zip/ directory). You can also download PKZIP program shareware version from PKWARE home page.
Unix users can used infozip or gnu zip programs to decompress zip files.
LZH, LHA
Those packets are packaged with lharc program. Lharc program for MSDOS can be found from some FTP sites. Lharc is also available for UNIX.
ARJ
ARJ fileas are produced by quite popular MSDOS packing program called ARJ. I know now other program for unpacking those. ARJ program is available from many FTP sites. ARJ decoding software is made by ARJ Software.
TAR
The files ending with ".tar" are packed with UNIX utility program called tar. You can extract the .tar files in UNIX computers using command "tar -xvf filename.tar", where filename.tar is the name of the file you want to extract. There or PC users there are some DOS ports of TAR program available. For Windows users new versions WinZip sould also handle TAR files.
.Z
The files ending with ".tar" are compressed with UNIX utility program calld compress. You can extract the .Z files in UNIX computers using command "uncompress filename.Z", where filename.Z is the name of the file you want to extract. There or PC users there are some DOS ports of compress program available. For Windows users new versions WinZip sould also handle TAR files.
.gz
The files ending with ".gz" are compressed with Gnu ZIP. You can extract the .gz files iwith gunzip utiility (comes in Gnu ZIP software package). Gnu ZIP is available for many computer platforms. WinZip handles also Gnu ZIP compressed files.
More information
More information on viewing different file formats can be found at Common Internet File Formats document http://www.matisse.net/files/formats.html.
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