Executable file formats, library formats, data formats, including links to the actual specifications themselves.
Many Linux-related formats are at the Linux Foundation Reference Specifications page.
Resources
Reading
Web
Detail Pages:
- ActivityPub A decentralized social networking protocol based upon the ActivityStreams 2.0 data format; it provides a client to server API for creating, updating and deleting content, as well as a federated server to server API for delivering notifications and content.
- ActivityStreams Details a model for representing potential and completed activities using the JSON format; it is intended to be used with vocabularies that detail the structure of activities, and define specific types of activities.
- Aephea Effective and adaptable HTML authoring.
- AGENTS.md A simple, open format for guiding coding agents.
- Agent-to-Agent (A2A) protocol An open standard designed to enable seamless communication and collaboration between AI agents.
- Amazon Ion A richly-typed, self-describing, hierarchical data serialization format offering interchangeable binary and text representations.
- ARchive (file format) An early executable file format.
- Arden (syntax) A markup language used for representing and sharing medical knowledge and used in an executable format by clinical decision support systems to generate alerts, interpretations, and to screen and manage messages to clinicians.
- Arrow The universal columnar format and multi-language toolbox for fast data interchange and in-memory analytics.
- ASCIIdoc An authoring language for documentation that leverages "just" ASCII characters.
- Avro A data serialization system.
- Awesome (lists) (Project Awesome) A curated collection of lists.
- Bebop A cutting-edge data serialization format, crafted for speed, safety, and simplicity.
- BRIL (Big Red Intermediate Language) A programming language for learning about compilers.
- CBOR (Concise Binary Object Representation) A data format whose design goals include the possibility of extremely small code size, fairly small message size, and extensibility without the need for version negotiation.
- Cloud Events A common information model for events.
- Common Object File Format (COFF) Executable file format.
- Data Format Description Language (DFDL) A language for describing text and binary data formats.
- deck.js Modern HTML Presentations
- DocBook Collection of XML/XSLT tags for publishing articles, books, and other forms of content.
- DocJSON A simple document format for building Hypermedia Web APIs.
- DWARF Debugging format for ELF excutables
- DZSlides A one-page-template to build your presentation in HTML5 and CSS3.
- edn (Extensible Data Notation) A format for serializing data.
- EFI (Executable Firmware Interface) The specification (describing PE files as the standard) for executable format in EFI environments.
- ESTree The format that caught on as a lingua franca for tools that manipulate JavaScript source code.
- Executable and Linkable Format (ELF) Executable file format.
- Executable and object file format reading Resources and reading around executable and object file formats.
- Extensible Markup Language (XML) Data or presentation format inspired by HTML and SGML, used extensively in software development.
- FathomJS Present JavaScript in its native environment.
- FlatBuffers An efficient OSS cross platform serialization library for a lot of mainstream programming languages. It was originally created at Google for game development and other performance-critical applications.
- Free Programming Books A collection of free learning resources (books).
- Gram A textual format for data; we have CSV for tables, JSON for documents, and gram for data graphs.
- GraphQL A query language APIs can support to enable SQL-like behavior across APIs; supports both query and mutation, and can define complex entity descriptions.
- Graphviz Open source graph visualization software.
- hdl (Hardware Description Language) A specialized language used to describe the structure/behavior of real world circuits. It is used by circuit designers to simulate circuits and logic prior to wiring and fabricating a hardware circuit.
- HonKit Building beautiful books using Markdown.
- HTML Slidy W3C's HTML-based slide system.
- Hypertext Application Language (HAL) An open specification describing a generic structure for RESTful resources.
- HyperText Markup Language (HTML) The OG.
- iCal (iCalendar) An open standard for calendar events and appointments.
- IDL (OMG Interface Definition Language) A descriptive language used to define data types and interfaces in a way that is independent of the programming language or operating system/processor platform.
- ImpressJS It's a presentation framework based on the power of CSS3 transforms and transitions in modern browsers and inspired by the idea behind prezi.com.
- InspireJS Lean, hackable, extensible slide deck framework.
- Invisible XML A language for describing the implicit structure of data, and a set of technologies for making that structure explicit as XML markup.
- JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) Object literal syntax from ECMAScript that's since taken off as a data storage and wire transfer format.
- JSON Web Token (JWT) An open, industry standard (RFC 7519) method for representing claims securely between two parties.
- Knowledge Interchange Format (KIF) A computer-oriented language for the interchange of knowledge among disparate programs.
- Library of Congress's Sustainability of Digital Formats One of the premiere resources in the world for in-depth information about digital file formats. It covers over 525 formats, encodings and wrappers in a variety of content categories – sound recordings, still images, datasets, textual materials, moving images, website and web archives, geospatial, music composition, 3D and architectural drawings and many more.
- Mach-O macOS executable file format.
- Markdeep
- Markdoc A Markdown-based syntax and toolchain for creating custom documtation sites.
- Markdown Text-based markup language originally intended for easy HTML creation.
- MarkItDown An open-source Python utility that simplifies converting diverse file formats into Markdown.
- Mermaid Generation of diagram and flowchart from text in a similar manner as markdown.
- MessagePack An efficient binary serialization format.
- Microsoft Office (libraries, specifications, etc) Various libraries to manipulate Microsoft Office files.
- Microsoft Office Protocols and Formats Detailed technical specifications for Microsoft protocols that are implemented and used by Office to interoperate or communicate with other Microsoft products.
- Microsoft Open Specifications Site A single site with many of Microsoft's Open Specification documents
- MQTT A Client Server publish/subscribe messaging transport protocol.
- MultiMarkdown A tool to help turn minimally marked-up plain text into well formatted documents, including HTML, PDF (by way of LaTeX), OPML, or OpenDocument (specifically, Flat OpenDocument or ‘.fodt’, which can in turn be converted into RTF, Microsoft Word, or virtually any other word-processing format).
- OAM (Open Application Model) A set of standard yet higher level abstractions for modeling cloud native applications on top of today's hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
- OASIS Advanced Message Queue Protocol (AMQP) The global standard enterprise messaging protocol.
- OAT (Android Runtime) Android runtime file format.
- OAuth Specification for third-party authentication.
- Object Constraint Language A formal language used to describe expressions on UML that typically specify invariant conditions that must hold for the system being modeled or queries over objects described in a model.
- Object Constraint Language (OCL) A formal language used to describe expressions on UML models that typically specify invariant conditions that must hold for the system being modeled or queries over objects described in a model.
- Open API Specification (OAS) A standard, programming language-agnostic interface description for REST APIs, which allows both humans and computers to discover and understand the capabilities of a service without requiring access to source code, additional documentation, or inspection of network traffic.
- Open Container Initiative (OCI) An open governance structure for the express purpose of creating open industry standards around container formats and runtimes.
- OpenCRUD A GraphQL CRUD API specification for databases.
- Open Grid Forum An open global community committed to driving the rapid evolution and adoption of modern advanced applied distributed computing, including cloud, grid and associated storage, networking and workflow methods. OGF is focused on developing and promoting innovative scalable techniques, applications and infrastructures to improve productivity in the enterprise and within the international research, science and business communities.
- Optimized Row Columnar (ORC) A highly efficient way to store Hive data. It was designed to overcome limitations of the other Hive file formats.
- Parquet An open source, column-oriented data file format designed for efficient data storage and retrieval.
- PlantUML Language for defining UML diagrams.
- Portable Document Format (PDF) A cross-platform format for rendering pixel-correct pages.
- Portable Executable (PE) Win32 executable file format.
- Portable Unix Documentation (PUD) Currently provides two mini-languages for authoring in the UNIX environment. The two mini-languages are for writing UNIX manual pages and FAQ documents. Source documents in PUD languages can be compiled to either cross-linked html or to troff. The troff output can be further compiled into PostScript, PDF, and plain text.
- PostScript A dynamically typed, concatenative programming language page description language in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing business.
- Programming Debug Binary (PDB) Debugging file format for Windows executables.
- Prompt Orchestration Markup Language (POML) An open-source framework designed to bring order, modularity, and extensibility to prompt engineering for LLMs.
- Protocol Buffers A language-neutral, platform-neutral, extensible way of serializing structured data for use in communications protocols, data storage, and more.
- QOI (Quite OK Image) format An image format that losslessly compresses RGB and RGBA images to a similar size of PNG, while offering a 20x-50x speedup in compression and 3x-4x speedup in decompression.
- Quick.Ref Cheat Sheets A collection of "cheat sheets"/quick-reference-guides for various tools and platforms and languages and ....
- Reactive Streams An initiative to provide a standard for asynchronous stream processing with non-blocking back pressure. This encompasses efforts aimed at runtime environments (JVM and JavaScript) as well as network protocols.
- Really Simple Syndication (RSS) XML-based format for syndicated sites.
- Resource Description Framework (RDF) A data format for Semantic Web involving triplets of data.
- Restful Objects A generic way to expose a domain model through a REST (or more precisely, hypermedia) API.
- reStructuredText (reST) Plaintext markup syntax and parser system.
- revealJS An open source HTML presentation framework.
- Rocks (Ubuntu) Ubuntu-based container images that meet the security, stability, and reliability requirements of cloud-native software.
- rst (ReStructured Text) A file format created by the Python community to write documentation. A markdown language like HTML but is much more lightweight and easier to read.
- S5 A Simple Standards-Based Slide Show System.
- Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) An XML-based vector image format for two-dimensional graphics with support for interactivity and animation.
- Scuttlebutt (protocol) How Scuttlebutt (a decentralized peer-to-peer protocol) peers find and talk to each other.
- SCXML (State Chart XML) State Machine notation for control abstraction specification.
- Shift (JavaScript AST) Defines an interface for an abstract syntax tree that can be used to represent the structure of an ECMAScript program, and tools that leverage that AST for interesting purposes.
- Shower An HTML/CSS/JS presentation engine.
- Simple Binary Encoding (SBE) Binary codec for several languages.
- Skriv/SkrivML A lightweight markup language.
- Slidedown Generate syntax-highlighted slides from Markdown.
- Slideous HTML-based slide system.
- Slides A slide presentation framework in HTML, JS, and OOCSS
- Smile (data format) A binary data format that defines a binary equivalent of standard JSON data format.
- SPARQL A query language designed for semantic web data retrieval and update.
- SpecIF A language for describing system models with attention to both syntax and semantics.
- SPIR (Standard Portable Intermediate Representation) The first open standard, cross-API intermediate language for natively representing parallel compute and graphics and is part of the core specifications of OpenCL 2.1, OpenCL 2.2, and the Vulkan GPU API.
- srcML An infrastructure for the exploration, analysis, and manipulation of source code; an XML format for source code; a lightweight, highly scalable, robust, multi-language parsing tool to convert source code into srcML.
- Swagger to UML A small pure Python script to convert OpenAPI/Swagger specifications to PlantUML.
- Syntax Definition Formalism (SDF) a metasyntax used to define context-free grammars: that is, a formal way to describe formal languages. It can express the entire range of context-free grammars.
- Taxi A language for describing API's and their models.
- TextBundle A file format for bundling text (Markdown) and binary (images, etc) in one file.
- Toon Compact, human-readable, schema-aware JSON for LLM prompts.
- UOR (Foundation) Dedicated to developing open source standards and technologies that enable user ownership and control of decentralized data infrastructure.
- WebDAV A open protocol for Distributed Authoring and Versioning over the Web (HTTP).
- WebIDL An interface description language (IDL) format for describing application programming interfaces (APIs) that are intended to be implemented in web browsers.
- WebMCP A Web-based version of the MCP protocol.
- XML2RFC IETF Author tools.
- XMQ A configuration language, data-storage language, logging language compatible with xml/html and json.
- Zoem An interpretive macro/programming language.
Last modified 25 May 2026