 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group You want what? Carol Daniels cad@melbpc.org.au |
 |
Have you ever been told you need to submit a file as a plain text file, plain ASCII text or an ASCII file? If you've been around computers for a while, chances are you know about this file format. If you are a relative newcomer, you may wonder what you've been asked to do, and if you will be able to do it. (If you're already a regular contributor to PC Update, and you've never been asked to resubmit your contribution as a plain text file, you can skip this article.)
What is ASCII?
ASCII is an acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, it's pronounced ass-kee. Like any code, it's essentially a substitution table.
ASCII code differs from, say, the code that describes a word processing document, in that it does not describe any special formatting. No fancy fonts. No bold. No curly quotes. So, yes, "plain ASCII" is redundant.
Although it is sometimes useful to know the code (the substitution table) and be able to produce the characters, line feeds, etc from their Hex values, all most users need to know is that if they confine their documents to standard numbers, letters and punctuation, without any flourishes whatsoever, that will be good enough.
You should note that a formatted document, which is "saved as" a plain text or ASCII text (or sometimes called a DOS text file) won't necessarily produce a clean ASCII text file. You may find that remnants of the formatting survive the "save as" function, or worse, the recipient of the file will discover these remnants. So it's better to create the file without formatting, than to format it, and save it as a plain text file.
Why, with all the whizz-bangery possible with modern word processing and desktop publishing programs would any one want plain text files? It's a common denominator. Most programs can read ASCII text, so using ASCII avoids problems with file incompatibility. (That's why we use it for PC Update.)
Some protocols expect ASCII text, for example standard e-mail programs. If you've ever received an e-mail message filled with strange characters where apostrophes, end of lines, quotation marks and such belong, those strange characters are the remnants of a formatted document being sent using a protocol that only handles ASCII characters. If the program that created the document and the one reading it use different codes to describe the formatting, the results won't be as expected. Binary (image or other proprietary formats) files can be turned into ASCII text for e-mail transmission, but a decoding program must be used to turn it back into an image or otherwise formatted file.
Reprinted from the November 1998 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
