The .RDO (Raster Document Object) file format is the

native format A native format, in the context of software applications, refers to the file format A file format is a Computer standard, standard way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file. It specifies how bits are used to encode info ...

used by

Xerox Xerox Holdings Corporation (, ) is an American corporation that sells print and electronic document, digital document products and services in more than 160 countries. Xerox was the pioneer of the photocopier market, beginning with the introduc ...

DocuTech DocuTech is the name given to a line of electronic production-publishing systems produced by Xerox Corporation. It allowed paper documents to be scanned, electronically edited, and then printed on demand. DocuTech systems were the last known to use ...

range of hardware and software, that underpins the company's "Xerox Document On Demand" "XDOD" systems. It is therefore a significant file format for the " print on demand" market sector, along with

PostScript PostScript (PS) is a page description language and dynamically typed, stack-based programming language. It is most commonly used in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm, but as a Turing complete programming language, it c ...

and

PDF Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe Inc., Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, computer hardware, ...

. RDO is a metafile format based on the

Open Document Architecture The Open Document Architecture (ODA) and interchange format (informally referred to as just ODA) is a free and open international standard document file format maintained by the ITU-T to replace all proprietary document file formats. ODA is det ...

(ODA) specifications: In Xerox's RDO implementation, description and control information is stored within the RDO file, while

raster image upright=1, The Smiley, smiley face in the top left corner is a raster image. When enlarged, individual pixels appear as squares. Enlarging further, each pixel can be analyzed, with their colors constructed through combination of the values for ...

s are stored separately, usually in a separate folder, as

TIFF Tag Image File Format or Tagged Image File Format, commonly known by the abbreviations TIFF or TIF, is an image file format for storing raster graphics images, popular among graphic artists, the publishing industry, and photographers. TIFF is w ...

files. The RDO file dictates which

bitmap In computing, a bitmap (also called raster) graphic is an image formed from rows of different colored pixels. A GIF is an example of a graphics image file that uses a bitmap. As a noun, the term "bitmap" is very often used to refer to a partic ...

images will be used on each page of a document, and where they will be placed.

Features and disadvantages

This approach has advantages and disadvantages over the monolithic approach used by PDF: The disadvantages of RDO are that it is a largely proprietary format, and the multi-file approach means that file management and orphan control is more of an issue: one cannot tell from a computer's file system whether all the files required for a document to print are present and correct. In RDO's favor, the multi-file approach allows a networked device to load the small RDO file and then request the larger bitmap files only when necessary: This allows a full job specification to be loaded and installed over a network almost immediately, with the larger bitmap files only having to be transferred as and when needed, allowing more flexibility for managing network traffic loading. The TIFF file format is highly portable, and Xerox's MakeReady software, supplied with its XDOD systems, readily imports and export postscript files: however, the Xerox "on demand" systems typically require a document library to be stored as RDO / TIFF files, and most non-Xerox applications will not read RDO structures directly.

References

"Document encoding formats for Phoenix: an example of on-demand publishing"
- Summary Report prepared by South Bank University
Oya Y. Rieger and Anne R. Kenney "Risk Management of Digital Information Case Study for Image File Format"
Xerox Page description languages Digital press Computer file formats

RDO RDO may stand for: * Radom Airport, Poland, IATA code * Radio Dom Ostankino, Russian broadcaster and member of the European Broadcasting Union * Ranidel de Ocampo (born 1981), Filipino basketball player * Raster Document Object (.rdo), a file fo ...

{{compsci-stub

Features and disadvantages

See also

References