72 lines
2.7 KiB
Plaintext
72 lines
2.7 KiB
Plaintext
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=======================
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Why Prefer Textfiles?
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=======================
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by Jakash3
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January 21, 2010
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Textfiles are a universal way to share knowledge and
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document anything that an intelligent entity wishes to
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express, which can be saved and viewable for generations.
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Textfiles are files that contain human readable characters
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in the ASCII encoding (Unicode is rising and replacing
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this). The ASCII characters are characters 32 to 126
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(decimal). The font of textfiles is usually Courier New,
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Lucida Console, Terminal, or System fonts; these fonts are
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chosen because of widespread availability on most systems,
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including the old ones. It has to be a font that everyone
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has and read. It is also traditional as this font(s) has
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stuck with textfiles and text editors for decades.
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For generations in the computer world, many
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users have written, read, and distributed textfiles.
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The content of textfiles varies greatly; you can write
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about anything you want. Some examples include (in abc
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order): Adventures, Anarchy, Art, BBS, Computers,
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Conspiricies, Drugs, Food, Games, Hacking, Humor,
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Internet, Law, Mass Media, Music, News, Occult,
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Phreaking, Piracy, Politics, Programming, School,
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Role Playing, Science, Sex, UFO's, and Viruses.
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Another advantage to textfiles is that it does not
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take any special software to read textfiles. In fact you
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can read textfiles through a system command line.
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And textfiles open up rather quickly with the simplest
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text editor instead of using some bulky, ram-eating
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word processor (that applies unfavored defaults such as
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automatically formatting the text read from a file, thus
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ruining the character count and ascii art that may be
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found in that text file) to load every time you open a
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textfile.
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One of the biggest advantages is that text files take up
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less space on a disk and in the real world too!
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In the real world, many people are still in the old
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tradition of using paper, ink, lead (pencils),
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paper clips, pencil sharpeners, erasers, white out,
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printers, and other office equipment. This waste of
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resources is no longer needed since we have computers
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which can hold thousands of times more text and
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memory than what we can store (and the time it take to
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write it) it on paper and other physical things that take
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up space and waste natural resources. So why do we still
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do it?
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My main point is that textfiles are simple, fast, and
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accessible to everyone which is the best way to spread
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text based information when it comes to storing them as
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files.
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If you don't have a text editor, then do one of the
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following:
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A) Download a text editor
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B) Read the text editor through a command shell
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C) Make a text editing program
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D) Do nothing
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A great place to find textfiles are at:
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http://textfiles.com/directory.html
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