Formatted text

From ArticleWorld

Formatted text is text which has associated style elements like typeface, fonts or hyperlinks. It should be noted, though, that formatted text is not a file format itself. Some file types are used store formatted text, but not all are binary (like DOC) or plain-text (like TeX).

The need for formatting text was natural on computers. Initially, on ASCII-only terminals, some formatting-like formulas were available. One would CAPITALIZE a word in order to emphasize it, surround it with _underscores_ (usually associated with italics) or *asterisks* (associated with bold faces). Spacing words (like in some o l d e r technical books) was also an option. Titles with multiple words were _often_surrounded_by_underscores_like_this_. These were more frequent in the hacker subculture though.

Markup languages

Markup languages appeared subsequently. Such languages create plain-text, marked-up versions of the text. The language is used to describe how the text will appear on the screen. For example, in HTML, a text may be formatted using code which looks like this:

<p>You should look it up in the <i>Copper Book</i> if you really need it.</p><pre>

The result would be a paragraph where "Copper Book" is displayed in italics.

==Formatted document files==

As document file formats embraced the ability to use formatted text, many editors began using binary files to store text formatted files. This was especially the case of WYSIWYG editors, where markup languages were somewhat tedious to use. Some formats, like Microsoft Word, encode formatting information and store it in a form that is not readable by humans. Such formats include PDF, DOC and RTF.

Another possibility is to use a markup language, but compress the file in order to minimize the space requirements. This is especially the case of OpenOffice.org, which uses an XML-based format, but compresses the file.




          [[Category:Computer file formats]]