I work on avionics and we definitely use fixed-length text all the time. Text is often much more convenient than blobs, even when adhering to strict schemas.

I work on avionics and we definitely use fixed-length text all the time. Text is often much more convenient than blobs, even when adhering to strict schemas. Syntaxes like XML, JSON, YAML, etc have become popular for their convenience and versatility, but they do not represent the whole of what is possible with text.