Plain text has been around for decades and it’s here to stay

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Plain text, Unicode, and encodings

  • Debate over what “plain text” means:

    • Some equate it with ASCII only; others with Unicode text (usually UTF‑8); others use the cryptographic sense (any unencrypted data).
    • One view: Unicode is too complex and quirky to be “plain”; ASCII is the only truly universal baseline.
    • Counter‑view: today UTF‑8 is the de facto standard and “good enough,” giving back a meaningful notion of plain text.

  • Encoding issues:

    • Past pain with code pages, Shift‑JIS/EUC‑JP, and mojibake is cited as a reason to standardize on UTF‑8.
    • Others still prefer explicit encodings/BOMs and even code‑page‑like systems, arguing files are meaningless without a declared format anyway.

Size, efficiency, and tradeoffs

  • Some criticize UTF‑8 as space‑wasteful vs UTF‑16 or compact single‑byte encodings, especially for Cyrillic, Greek, and CJK.
  • Others present measurements where UTF‑16 only wins modestly for Japanese text and often loses once markup and compression are considered.
  • Consensus from many: small encoding gains rarely justify the interoperability costs of non‑UTF‑8 text.

Limits of plain text and structure

  • Plain text’s strengths: simplicity, tool ubiquity, longevity, easy parsing, and version control.
  • Limits noted: no native images/graphics, messy large configs, ambiguous grapheme clusters, RTL handling, and unreadability of unfamiliar scripts.
  • Some argue XML/JSON/YAML/Markdown/Org are “yes‑and” layers: still printable, but with defined structure.
  • Others point out formats like XML behave more like binary when you factor in encoding declarations and auto‑detection.

TUIs, terminals, and richer UIs

  • Strong enthusiasm for modern TUIs: perceived speed, consistency, low resource use, keyboard‑centric workflows, easy text selection/copying, and longevity.
  • Terminals now support layout primitives and even graphics protocols, blurring the GUI/TUI line.
  • Skeptics question rebuilding rich GUIs over terminals when we have abundant pixels and GPU power, especially for maps and images.
  • Ongoing tension between “constraint breeds good UX” vs “constraints limit what’s reasonable or possible.”

Plain‑text diagrams, plotting, and tools

  • Many tools are shared for ASCII/Unicode diagrams, box‑drawing, terminal plots, and Emacs modes.
  • Interest in hybrid text‑plus‑visual representations and concern about accessibility of ASCII diagrams for screen readers.

Plain text for personal data and accounting

  • Several describe successful use of plain‑text note systems, invoicing, and accounting (e.g., ledger‑style tools).
  • Benefits: no lock‑in, easy scripting, git history, timestamp attestation, and straightforward “escape plans” to other formats like CSV.