I have now completed the first D.I.T.A exercise which was based around Experimenting with data formats, types of views and applications.
Obviously I have used Word an awful lot but WordPad or NotePad is something I have avoided due to the apparently weird formatting it would do to docs. Plus how you can type on one line forever and it never switches down to the next paragraph unless you want to. I knew it was used for various HTML, web, etc, tasks but other than that it was usually just left alone.
Seeing how a document is represented in ASCII was interesting as the actual text was at the bottom of the file and above it was masses of nonsense or code. Nonsense in that it meant little to me but it is important and if you start to monkey around with it, bad things can happen.
The most useful thing from this exercise has been adding a picture or image but doing so in a more than cut and paste fashion. Previously when I have done that in Word or anywhere else I have just inserted it in the document. Job done.
However, linking the image to the original file – so that when the original is changed the copy elsewhere is as well – is very useful and I see how you can have a more dynamic environment or end product without really having to do anything but make the correct Save As first time around. A mini eureka moment on my first day of the course. Splendid.
The different file types you can save a document as are very useful, more useful than I would have thought before. I suppose that in a standard office environment saving in many different ways is generally just a distraction (even a dangerous mistake) but if you start to use the power of the file types it’s far easier to set up HTML, add things and generally get more bang for your buck.
Finally, I suppose that opening a document in ASCII / a different format than the original is a way to create primitive cryptography. As solvable as re-saving back in the correct format perhaps but maybe a cheap code system.
