Text files store alphanumeric characters without visual formatting information. They are versatile and small in size, but lack formatting. Unicode aims to assign a unique number to every character used in every language on earth. Text files can also contain machine-readable text tags for formatting information.
A text file is a computer file that stores a typed document as a series of alphanumeric characters, usually without visual formatting information. The content may be a personal note or list, a newspaper or journal article, a book, or any other text that can be reproduced accurately in typed form. Text files are similar to word processing files in that the content of both is mostly text; they differ in that text files usually do not record information such as font style and size, layout, or other details that would specify the appearance of a finished document. Some computer operating systems make a basic distinction between a text file, which is to be translated directly into human-readable text, and a binary file, which is interpreted directly by the computer.
In most schemes used for encoding text, each character is assigned a numeric value, with the text then written as a string of binary numbers. A family of coding schemes, called the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII), became a widely used standard early in computing history, despite its limited support for languages other than English. The ISO 8859 key family provided much better support for Latin-based languages and similar alphabets, but was unable to encode characters from East Asian languages such as Japanese, leading to a proliferation of standards incompatible.
More recently, the Unicode® Consortium has developed a coding system called Unicode® which aims to assign a unique number to every character used in every language on earth. This will allow for a single code to be used for each language and will allow texts from multiple languages to appear in one file. The first part of Unicode is based on ISO 8859, itself based on ASCII. Using Unicode® can also have benefits in English-speaking countries, as text encoded using older schemes can show slight inconsistencies when moved from one system to another.
The advantages of text files include small size and versatility. Smaller kilobytes or megabytes of the same data stored in other formats, can be exchanged quickly and massively via email or disk. Most can be opened on computers running different operating systems, using basic software. The main disadvantage is the lack of formatting. A text file may be a poor choice for representing a document that contains images or relies on design elements to convey meaning, such as a file containing tabular data, mathematical formulas, or concrete poetry.
Text files are generally intended to be read and edited by humans, but not all contain content primarily intended for human consumption. Most programming code is stored in a text file before it is compiled, i.e. translated into a machine-readable binary file. Files may also contain machine-readable text tags that provide formatting information in addition to plain text. For example, a Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) file can be opened as a plain text file in a text editor or viewed as a formatted web page after being interpreted by a web browser. Similar schemes include LaTeX, which is used for writing articles science, and Extensible Markup Language (XML), used to structure data.
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