Document interchange standards

Interchange standards permit electronic documents to be exchanged mailed, etc. 

Documents are produced using dissimilar systems and on different computers. Even when standard tools are used, standards are needed to define conventions for their use e.g. use of style sheets and macros.

Require for archiving. The lifetime of word processing systems may be much less than the lifetime of the software being documented. An archiving standard may be explained to make sure that the document can be accessed in future.