Sustainability of Digital Formats: Planning for Library of Congress Collections
Sustainability of Digital Formats: Planning for Library of Congress Collections |
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| Introduction | Sustainability Factors | Content Categories | Format Descriptions | Contact | |
| Full name | Hewlett Packard AdvanceWrite Text File |
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| Description |
AdvanceWrite, or AW, is the native text file format for the Hewlett Packard MS-DOS word processing software of the same name. |
| Production phase | Initial state |
| LC experience or existing holdings | The Manuscripts Division at the Library of Congress has received AW files with personal papers collections. |
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| LC preference | See the Library of Congress Recommended Formats Statement for format preferences for textual works. |
| Disclosure | Limited technical information about the format is available through documentation about the related software program of the same name. Comments welcome. |
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| Documentation | There is no known specification that defines AW. Comments welcome. |
| Adoption | Adoption was limited overall. AW files were the default file format for the the HP AdvanceWrite software with some capabilities in other software programs including Adobe PageMaker version 3.0. According to Pitonyak, AW was an import/read only format for OpenOffice.org (OOo), better known as OpenOffice, in 2004. Useful life of the format ended with the phasing out of HP AdvanceWrite Plus in the late 1980s. |
| Licensing and patents | AW is an obsolete format no longer supported by any current software platform. There are no known patents. Licenses, if they existed when AW was in active use, are no longer valid. Comments welcome. |
| Transparency | AW files are usually simple text files and can be opened in Notepad or other text readers. |
| Self-documentation | Poor. No embedded metadata in file headers. Comments welcome. |
| External dependencies | As far as the writers of this resource are able to determine, full functionality for AW files was limited to HP AdvanceWrite software. According to Paillet on p. 106, AdvanceWrite Plus did include the ability to convert AW to ASCII format and back which was essential for using AW content with other processes including Termbase databases. |
| Technical protection considerations | None |
| Text | |
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| Normal rendering | Acceptable support. |
| Integrity of document structure | Very basic structure support. Comments welcome. |
| Integrity of layout and display | According to Lack in 1987 (p. 26), AdvanceWrite Plus software added the capability to include scanned graphics into AW files as well as use red line edits and corrections. Earlier versions of the software did not support this. |
| Support for mathematics, formulae, etc. | AdvanceWrite Plus software enabled the use of limited mathematical equations to AW files. |
| Functionality beyond normal rendering | Not supported. |
| Tag | Value | Note |
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| Filename extension | aw |
From PRONOM |
| Pronom PUID | x-fmt/326 |
See http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/PRONOM/x-fmt/326. |
| Wikidata Title ID | Q48911845 |
See https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q48911845. |
| General | |
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| History | AdvanceWrite software, written in the programming language C, was developed for HP by the Samna Corporation, a U.S.-based computer software company that was bought by Lotus Software in 1990 for $65 million for HP. According to Paillet, the AdvanceWrite software started out as identical to Samna Word, a word processing systems for the DOS market. In 1986, according to Liebowitz and Margolis, Samna Word was among second tier group along with DisplayWrite, Word, MultiMate for DOS word processing but behind industry leaders WordPerfect and WordStar. The DOS market for word processing declined in the late 1980s pushed in part by Microsoft's shift to the Windows version of Word which was released in late 1989. Samna released Ami, its version of a Windows based word processor, about the same time. By the early 1990s, the two leading Windows word processors were Ami Professional and Microsoft Word. Samna's Ami was eventually incorporated into Lotus Word Pro. According to Wikipedia, Samna's legacy with Ami lives on through its file extension, '.sam'. Samna had less success with the AdvanceWrite and the AW format which never took off to the same degree. Comments welcome. |
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