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Anelectronic document is adocument that can be sent through non-physical means, such astelex,email, and theinternet.[1] Originally, anycomputer data were considered as something internal—the final data output was always on paper. However, the development ofcomputer networks has made it so that in most cases it is much more convenient to distribute electronic documents than printed ones. The improvements inelectronic visual display technologies made it possible to view documents on a screen instead of printing them (thus saving paper and the space required to store the printed copies).[citation needed] However, using electronic documents for the final presentation instead of paper has created the problem of multiple incompatiblefile formats. Evenplain text computer files are not free from this problem—e.g. underMS-DOS, most programs could not work correctly withUNIX-style text files (seenewline), and for non-English speakers, the differentcode pages always have been a source of trouble.
Even more problems are connected with complex file formats of variousword processors,spreadsheets, andgraphics software. To alleviate the problem, many software companies distribute freefile viewers for their proprietary file formats (one example isAdobe'sAcrobat Reader). The other solution is the development of standardized non-proprietary file formats (such asHTML andOpenDocument), and electronic documents for specialized uses have specialized formats—the specializedelectronic articles in physics useTeX orPostScript.