RE: Names for UTF-8 with and without BOM - pragmatic

From: Marco Cimarosti (marco.cimarosti@essetre.it)
Date: Wed Nov 06 2002 - 08:18:34 EST

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    Lars Kristan wrote:
    > > .txt UTF-8 require We want plain text files to
    > > have BOM to distinguish
    > > from legacy codepage files
    >
    > Hmmmm, what does "plain" mean?! Perhaps files with a BOM
    > should be called "text" files (or .txt files;) as
    > opposed to "plain text" files, which in my opinion should
    > be just that - _plain_ text. No ASCII plain text file had
    > an ASCII signature. I believe "plain text" should be
    > something that will be as easy to use (and handle) as
    > ASCII plain text files were.

    "Plain" per se means nothing, in this context. The term "plain text", in
    Unicode jargon, means the opposite of "rich text".

    "Rich text" (or "fancy text") is another Unicode jargon term, meaning text
    containing *mark-up*, such as HTML, XML, RTF, troff, TeX, proprietary
    word-processor formats, etc.

    Unicode text not containing mark-up is called "plain text", regardless of
    the fact that it might be quite "complicated" by the presence of BOM's, bidi
    controls, etc.

    _ Marco

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