Technical standards
From Digipedia
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Overview
Technical standards are the building blocks for successful content creation and management and cover every stage of the digital content life cycle. Using a standards-based approach means that good practice based on past experience is adopted and there is consistency in current practice.
Standards are grouped into two broad categories:
- Open standards – formally recognized by a body responsible for setting and disseminating standards, usually developed through the collaboration of a number of interested parties. Examples are standards such as the TCP/IP set of protocols, maintained by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) or the Adobe Portable Document Format 1.7 (PDF) which is now maintained by the ISO standards body.
- Proprietary standards – not formally recognized by a standards body but widely used and recognized as a standard by its users. An example is a file format used by a software product that has a dominant or large share of the market in a particular area. File formats in this category include Microsoft Office formats, Macromedia Flash and Java.
At the business planning stage, time should be spent identifying which standards will be used and why they are the most appropriate.
Further information
The JISC Standards Catalogue provides a short definition of each standard, links to further information about each one and a list of standards bodies together with an overview of their work.
The good practice guides also provide advice on the range of standards and their application, as do specialist advisory bodies such as JISC Digital Media and TechDis.
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