In computing, plain text is the contents of an ordinary sequential file readable as textual material without much processing, usually opposed to formatted text and to "binary files" in which some portions must be interpreted as binary objects (encoded integers, real numbers, images, etc.).
The encoding has traditionally been either ASCII, one of its many derivatives such as ISO/IEC 646 etc., or sometimes EBCDIC. Unicode-based encodings such as UTF-8 and UTF-16 are gradually replacing the older ASCII derivatives limited to 7 or 8 bit codes.
Read more about Plain Text: Plain Text and Rich Text, Plain Text, The Unicode Definition, Usage
Famous quotes containing the words plain and/or text:
“Behold, Esau my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man.”
—Bible: Hebrew Jacob, in Genesis, 27:11.
To his mother Rebekah, explaining how the blind Isaac might discover the ploy of his pretending to be Esau. “Esau was a cunning hunter, a man of the field; and Jacob was a plain man, dwelling in tents.” (25:27)
“What our eyes behold may well be the text of life but one’s meditations on the text and the disclosures of these meditations are no less a part of the structure of reality.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)