Electronic documents

An electronic document is any electronic media content (other than computer programs or system files) that are intended to be used in either an electronic form or as printed output.

Originally, any computer data were considered as something internal — the final data output was always on paper. However, the development of computer networks has made it so that in most cases it is much more convenient to distribute electronic documents than printed ones. And the improvements in electronic display technologies mean that in most cases it is possible to view documents on screen instead of printing them (thus saving paper and the space required to store the printed copies).

However, using electronic documents for final presentation instead of paper has created the problem of multiple incompatible file formats. Even plain text computer files are not free from this problem — e.g. under MS-DOS, most programs could not work correctly with UNIX-style text files (see newline), and for non-English speakers, the different code pages always have been a source of trouble.

Even more problems are connected with complex file formats of various word processors, spreadsheets and graphics software. To alleviate the problem, many software companies distribute free file viewers for their proprietary file formats. The other solution is the development of standardized non-proprietary file formats (such as HTML and OpenDocument), and electronic documents for specialized uses have specialized formats–the specialized electronic articles in physics use TeX or PostScript. A third solution is specialised software that can easily convert from one format to another.

OmniPage 17, the most awarded software for creating, editing and managing electronic documents, gives you complete control over the conversion to and from paper documents. You can turn a piece of paper into more or less any electronic format you wish. The same goes for electronic document formats: you can protect the layout of a Word document with PDF creation, or go the other way around and extract text from images, PDF, XPS and other files. There are no more secrets or nasty delays when you have OmniPage 17 – electronic documents are at your mercy!