Plain text

With Plain text (English for plain text) is data that can be directly implemented using a character encoding in text. In addition, this text provides is the actual information, that is the interpretation of the data is necessary no knowledge and evaluation of a special notation - such as in the case of XML. The in the Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) type provided for Plain text is text / plain.

Different character encodings As for text files and for plain text is used ( for example, ASCII, Latin-1 or UTF -8, see further text file).

The term " Plain text " excludes further formats and standards, for example. Doc or HTML. Maximum CSV data could still be covered plain text, however, these are strictly speaking not.

In contrast to the term " text file " is the term is not necessarily limited to file contents, but refers to the data format itself, for example, when data is transferred in conjunction with network protocols.

The term plain text (in this case, written together as a rule) is also associated with cryptography uses ( " plaintext "), while usually cleartext were lack of security against eavesdropping relates. In German, both terms are translated as plain text.