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:
“‘But where can we draw water,’
Said Pearse to Connolly,
‘When all the wells are parched away?
O plain as plain can be
There’s nothing but our own red blood
Can make a right Rose Tree.’”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that a single book is not. A book is not an isolated entity: it is a narration, an axis of innumerable narrations. One literature differs from another, either before or after it, not so much because of the text as for the manner in which it is read.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)