Every PC user is constantly confronted withdifferent 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 themselvespersonal computers - 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.
Самым простым текстовым форматом традиционно is the format of TXT. 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 breaking 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 andBy increasing their sales, Microsoft is creating another popular format, called the Rich Text Format (or simply RTF). It is a text that is marked up using certain “control words”, which allow not only to produce, but also to save complex formatting elements and insert formulas, tables, pictures, footers and footnotes into the text.
However, RTF is quite inferior inDOC, also created by Microsoft specifically for a software package called Microsoft Office. Created over fifteen years ago, DOC includes a huge number of possibilities for formatting and processing text, creating, editing and placing images, charts, tables and other elements. It should be noted that these functions will work most correctly only in MS Word. This is primarily due to the fact that Microsoft does not have 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 full. This fact is one of the main reasons that besides the DOC format, other text file formats are widely used nowadays.
The main difference of the DOC format from textRTF and TXT formats are used by its binary, which makes it unreadable in such simple text editors as Wordpad, Lexicon, Atlantis. Moreover, in some cases it is possible to observe the incompatibility of DOC files created in different versions of MS Word.
Форматы текстовых файлов открывать и You can edit in a huge number of programs. In addition to the previously mentioned MS Word, the most common ones are StarOffice, released by Sun Microsystems, Corel WordPerfect, and the free OpenOffice.org package.
With the spread of electronic reader devices, other text file formats are gaining popularity, for example, FB2 and LRF.
In order to be able to usedifferent text formats on different platforms, created a large number of programs, called converters. Text file converters allow you to save the source text from one format to another and use it later on various devices and platforms.
Converters are used not only to savetext from one format to another, but also to create files that, unlike their source, can be used on devices that are not able to “read” the original files. For example, some e-books that do not support popular text file formats can easily recognize LRF or FB2 formats obtained from source files using converter programs.
