There are so many file formats and, unfortunately, versions of these that there are many occasions when we may wish to translate between file formats or between versions of formats. This may be to go from an application to a format which can be made widely available on the WWW or from a format made available via a WWW site to a format suitable for an application.

An excellent starting point is the set of Graphics Utilities collected and made available through the UK Higher Educations's Advisory Group On Computer Graphics (AGOCG - see list of references for URL). Sue Cunningham has put together links to many tools. These cover graphics, sound and video formats for PCs, Macs and Unix systems.

The list included contains software available for downloading or use on the network. Commercial tools are also available either as stand alone or embedded utilities. An example of this is the software from Advanced Technology Center (ATC). Their ForWare software is concerned with converting from paper documents into intelligent computer files and allows raster-to-vector conversion and compliance to industry standard specifications such as CALS. Tools are also available for the WWW from InterCAP.