• .DOC (word): works fine in microsoft word, works poorly elsewhere

• .RTF (word): See ".DOC" above. Same thing, just in ascii markup format, not binary

• .WPD (wordperfect): works fine in wordperfect, problematic importing to other systems

• .SXW (OpenOffice): good for OpenOffice, open specification, not importable to other formats yet

• .HTML (web): HyperText Markup Language: web pages. Fine if your word processor sticks to W3M standards (word doesn't).

• .PDF (Adobe): Supposed Portable Document Format: a good end product, not for document interchange or collaboration.

• .PS (Adobe): PostScript, the de facto standard for end productdocumentation on Unix/Linux. Not well accepted in the windows world. A standard in the Mac world.

• .TeX (and .LaTeX): Excellent for collaboration, not GUI or WYSIWYG (mostly), more accepted by Scientists and on Unix/Linux.

  See also Spreadsheet formats