Formats of text files and programs for working with them: history and our days

Every PC user constantly encounters different formats of text files, but hardly thinks about how rich the history of these formats and programs that gave a person the opportunity to read books, work with the text and create all the necessary documentation directly on the computer.

The history of text files is not much younger than the personal computers themselves - already the first programmers, their masterpieces were written in the first analogues of the modern "notebook". So what are the formats of text files and programs for working with them? First you need to understand what text files are for, what are the differences between them and what they have in common. It unites absolutely all text formats their main task - saving text information. They differ in the ability to process and format text, as well as access to information stored in files in terms of compatibility with other programs.

The simplest text format is traditionally the TXT format. It is the most modest in terms of features and the oldest text format. Due to its simplicity (TXT capabilities are limited to typing and splitting it into paragraphs), this format is often used by a huge number of applications and programs on a variety of platforms.

With the proliferation of personal computers and the increase in their sales, Microsoft is creating another popular format, called Rich Text Format (or simply RTF). It is a text that is marked with the help of certain "control words", which allow not only to produce, but also to preserve complex formatting elements and to insert formulas, tables, figures, footers and footnotes into the text.

However, RTF is pretty much inferior in capabilities to the DOC format, also created by Microsoft specifically for the software package called Microsoft Office. Created more than fifteen years ago, DOC includes a huge number of opportunities for formatting and processing text, creating, editing and placing images, diagrams, tables and other elements. It should be noted that the most correct these functions will work only in MS Word. This is due primarily to the fact that Microsoft is not the current specifications of the DOC format and does not allow its competitors and independent developers to use the capabilities of this format to the fullest. This fact is one of the main reasons that in addition to the DOC format, other formats of text files are widely used nowadays.

The main difference between the DOC format and the text formats RTF and TXT is its binary character, which makes it unreadable in such simple text editors as Wordpad, Lexicon, Atlantis. Moreover, in some cases it is possible to observe incompatibility of DOC-files created in different versions of MS Word.

Formats of text files can be opened and edited in a huge number of programs. In addition to the previously mentioned MS Word, the most common of them are StarOffice, released by Sun Microsystems, WordPerfect from Corel and a free package OpenOffice.org.

With the proliferation of electronic reader devices, other text file formats are gaining popularity, for example, FB2 and LRF.

In order to be able to use various text formats on different platforms, a large number of programs are called converters. Text file converters allow you to save source code from one format to another and use it later on various devices and platforms.

Converters are used not only to save text from one to another format, but also to create files that, unlike their source, can be used on devices that are unable to "read" the original files. For example, some e-books that do not support popular text file formats can easily recognize the LRF or FB2 formats obtained from source files using converter programs.