Quote:
Originally Posted by jandrew
Well, some people have different ideas of what makes a plain text file. My LaTeX files, html files, markdown files, xml files, css files, rdoc files ... are all plain text files.
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No, those are formatted text. You can tell because of the mimetype.
Anyone who feels the need to describe it as plain text vs. binary (text?
) is causing themselves and everyone around them unnecessary confusion without, as far as I am aware, having any meaningful point.
Just in case, I will explain it for you:
There is binary and then there is text. Text is readable because it is based on characters we understand. Binary is NOT readable because it uses computer codes that need to be interpreted by specific programs. With me so far?
Text comes in different types, like:
- text/plain -- Just Regular Words, like the kind you see on a sheet of paper. Commonly referred to as "plain text".
- text/html -- text with textual tags which can be read but obscure meaning, unless you happen to know which stuff is meta info, and even then requires additional effort to mentally figure things out. A type of formatted text.
- text/css -- textual info with no meaning outside that given it by some sort of (web) processing engine.
- text/x-markdown -- text with an agreed-upon style of contextual sheet-of-paper-like contextual info. (Mostly) readable as text/plain but only with a subset of the meaning. (Because of things like links.)
and others.
There is probably some sort of reason, silly though it may be, why people come to agreements about the meaning of specific terminology.