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I hate to be pedantic[1], but: > HTML, Markdown, JSON, LaTeX, and many other standard formats, are just plain text. On this definition, Word and Excel are jus

I hate to be pedantic[1], but: > HTML, Markdown, JSON, LaTeX, and many other standard formats, are just plain text. On this definition, Word and Excel are just (zipped) plain text files. > Every device, including ones long gone, and ones not invented yet, can read and edit plain text. This definitely isn't true, and it kind of misses the point that there's no such thing as "plain text". It's still encoded in ascii, or utf-8, and still potentially has problems being read on other machines. It's reasonable to say that ascii has become so ubiquitous as to be universal, but it definitely wasn't always so, and won't definitely always be. [1] Okay, I love to be pedantic

severak_cz 5y ago
> On this definition, Word and Excel are just (zipped) plain text files. but this is true only for newer versions. In older versions it was binary salad derived from C's data model. And even in new versions these are far from files you can safely edit by hand.
- jibalt 5y ago
  doc and xls files have nothing to do with "C's data model".
jibalt 5y ago
Older Word (doc) and Excel (xls) files aren't "zipped" and aren't plain text files. > This definitely isn't true Yes, actually it is. > and it kind of misses the point that there's no such thing as "plain text". Who here made such a point? Anyway, that's not true either. > It's still encoded in ascii, or utf-8 So, plain text files. > and still potentially has problems being read on other machines. What "other machines"? What problems? What matters is the software, not "machines". > It's reasonable to say that ascii has become so ubiquitous as to be universal, but it definitely wasn't always so I was alive when EBCDIC was common, but that isn't relevant. > and won't definitely always be. Sure, there's the heat death of the universe eventually.
senko 5y ago
You can't be pedantic and then say Word and Excel are files. They're applications. On a more serious note, ascii and nowadays utf8 are customarily considered plain text, the fact that a specific charset is used doesn't mean it's not text.
usrbinbash 5y ago
> that there's no such thing as "plain text" Please show me a computing device that cannot deal with ASCII. And UTF-8 has, by now, reached a level of ubiquity that encompasses almost everything in IT as well.
- pubby 5y ago
  There's still EBCDIC systems being used.
  - usrbinbash 5y ago
    I'll just quote my own answer from elsewhere in this thread: Even if such a device needs to be used, decoding ascii is a trivial lookup operation, not remotely comparable to decoding some arcane binary format, or a convoluted XML- derived format such as they are used in WYSIWYG editor formats.
- mro_name 5y ago
  indeed, why not use real plain text – not markdown. Homer was able to write the fall of troy and Shakespeare Hamlet without bold text. So what can't one express without?
  - jibalt 5y ago
    Markdown is "real plain text". Why not just use letters and avoid punctuation ... that's all Markdown is: punctuation. > Homer was able to write the fall of troy and Shakespeare Hamlet without bold text. Oh really? Have you ever seen a manuscript? Unlike handwritten text, plain text doesn't provide a means to underline, use italics, subscripts and superscripts, etc. Things like Markdown provide conventions for denoting such things in plain text.
  - pid-1 5y ago
    > without bold text. Are you sure they didn't use bold text, though?
    - 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
zelphirkalt 5y ago
When plain text is zipped, it is no longer plain text and as such it does not take advantage of all the things that can be done with simple text files, unless there is additional tooling, which again unzips the zipped files. This creates some friction of course. General tools do not bother with implementing a knowledge about every format on the planet, so those zips stay zips and are treated as bninary data by version control, which makes them not too useful.

severak_cz 5y ago

> On this definition, Word and Excel are just (zipped) plain text files. but this is true only for newer versions. In older versions it was binary salad derived from C's data model. And even in new versions these are far from files you can safely edit by hand.

jibalt 5y ago
doc and xls files have nothing to do with "C's data model".

jibalt 5y ago

Older Word (doc) and Excel (xls) files aren't "zipped" and aren't plain text files. > This definitely isn't true Yes, actually it is. > and it kind of misses the point that there's no such thing as "plain text". Who here made such a point? Anyway, that's not true either. > It's still encoded in ascii, or utf-8 So, plain text files. > and still potentially has problems being read on other machines. What "other machines"? What problems? What matters is the software, not "machines". > It's reasonable to say that ascii has become so ubiquitous as to be universal, but it definitely wasn't always so I was alive when EBCDIC was common, but that isn't relevant. > and won't definitely always be. Sure, there's the heat death of the universe eventually.

senko 5y ago

You can't be pedantic and then say Word and Excel are files. They're applications. On a more serious note, ascii and nowadays utf8 are customarily considered plain text, the fact that a specific charset is used doesn't mean it's not text.

usrbinbash 5y ago

> that there's no such thing as "plain text" Please show me a computing device that cannot deal with ASCII. And UTF-8 has, by now, reached a level of ubiquity that encompasses almost everything in IT as well.

pubby 5y ago
There's still EBCDIC systems being used.
- usrbinbash 5y ago
  I'll just quote my own answer from elsewhere in this thread: Even if such a device needs to be used, decoding ascii is a trivial lookup operation, not remotely comparable to decoding some arcane binary format, or a convoluted XML- derived format such as they are used in WYSIWYG editor formats.
mro_name 5y ago
indeed, why not use real plain text – not markdown. Homer was able to write the fall of troy and Shakespeare Hamlet without bold text. So what can't one express without?
- jibalt 5y ago
  Markdown is "real plain text". Why not just use letters and avoid punctuation ... that's all Markdown is: punctuation. > Homer was able to write the fall of troy and Shakespeare Hamlet without bold text. Oh really? Have you ever seen a manuscript? Unlike handwritten text, plain text doesn't provide a means to underline, use italics, subscripts and superscripts, etc. Things like Markdown provide conventions for denoting such things in plain text.
- pid-1 5y ago
  > without bold text. Are you sure they didn't use bold text, though?
  - 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

zelphirkalt 5y ago

When plain text is zipped, it is no longer plain text and as such it does not take advantage of all the things that can be done with simple text files, unless there is additional tooling, which again unzips the zipped files. This creates some friction of course. General tools do not bother with implementing a knowledge about every format on the planet, so those zips stay zips and are treated as bninary data by version control, which makes them not too useful.