3.5.2 Outline the need for standard formats for storing documents and
files.
Teaching Note:
Link with 3.4.8 and 3.4.9. 2
JSR Notes:
More on the concept of "standards". If you become an engineer, you'll realize why standards are so important. In fact, if you ever build anything with any parts that come from different sources, you'll realize why standards are so important. Perhaps I'm in the field of building brains and minds. If so, one handy, if Hamm... can't think of the word... standard, is the IB. It's a standard curriculum. If you get a 36 on the IB diploma, it doesn't matter whether you did so in Prague, Istanbul, Santo Domingo, Kuala Lumpur, Addis Ababa, or Antananarivo. I taught you the same way, to the same standard, where-ever. And how do we know that?? Because you got a 36 on a standard exam, based on a standard curriculum. And so all universities around the world can use/share in a confident way, that score.
Formats of files need to be standard if they are going to be shared. We've all had problems opening up files that were either non-standard to a certain extent, or of a different standard than our computer/applications were capable of handling. Here's a great analogy of physical standards: plugs. You should see my "electronics" drawer at home; every possible electrical prong you can imagine - probably looks the same in many of your drawers/garages. Fortunately many digital standards are not regional, as electrical plugs are. This is one reason why we need to love Bill Gates. A .doc is a .doc is a .doc (more or less).
What makes a standard file standard is standard ways doing all the things that a file needs to do. For a simple word processing document, that's not a lot ASCII is ASCII (speaking of standards), but as soon as you start including fancy stuff like tables and word art, the "ways" become more and more potentially varied.
Lots of good stuff on ASCII in the text, though there's no direct mention of it in the syllabus for 3.5.2. But it certainly is the quintessential standard for binary code, and is mentioned in 3.5.1. More on it in my "How Computers Work..." document. But the one important point to re-iterate is that it is only the 7-bit ASCII set that is truly internationally standard. Practically every font in the world uses the first 128 characters in a standard way. When you add the 8th bit, things get a little less standard. There are multitudes of 8-bit ASCII versions based on various local languages. And don't forget about the 16 bit UNICODE set - less variations needed there, simply because you've go 64 536 slots to fill.
You are to make a link with 3.4.8 and 3.4.9, and that's easy enough to do with 3.4.8, but 3.4.9??