Here we will discuss my experiences with using plain text. However, before we dive into that, I first must tell you a little about myself.
I am legally blind. My mother had Rubella Syndrome. I only see out of my right eye, and later in life I had developed Glaucoma and type 1 Diabetes. However, these don't stop me from doing what I need to do. I easily push forward and accomplish what I need to do even if it takes me a little more time than it does for others.
As a legally blind individual, I use what is called a screen reader. This is a specialized program on the computer that reads all of the text, menus and dialog boxes from programs to me that are displayed on the screen. Without the screen reader, I would not be able to use my computer at all.
Although I do have some usable vision, I am speech oriented. I do not read large print so that's why I use the screen reader program. And, just to let you all know, screen readers can't read graphics. They can only read textual information that's it. Graphics are totally useless to the blind anyway.
OK, so now that I have that out of the way, let's get into the meat of this post because I have a lot of ground to cover here.
To begin, I am a huge fan of plain, ordinary text files. I absolutely love them with a passion, and I absolutely hate word processing programs. A matter of fact, the only thing that I even use a word processor for is to spellcheck and that's it. Other than that, word processing programs are totally a waste of time.
So why do I love plain text so much? Well as you know, plain text is the simplest form of digital written communication there is. It doesn't require any specialized programs in which to edit or view it, plus it can be viewed and edited on every single computer platform there is with absolutely no problems whatsoever unlike other file formats.
Not only this, but plain text just makes more sense. Oh, and did I mention that plain text is future proof? Back in the earlier days of computers; that is, back when MS-DOS was king, everything was plain text. If you wanted to do something in MS-DOS, you had to actually know the commands and you had to type them out in order to use them. You used what is called a command prompt which basically is just an area on the screen with a flashing cursor on it that is waiting for you to type in something. It is here that you would type in whatever command you wanted to use to perform a particular task such as copying, deleting and moving files for example.
MS-DOS was definitely a text based operating system. I was one of those people who swore up and down that I would never ever use Windows. However, I am sure that most all other MS-DOS users made those very same claims too. However, look who is using Windows now? Now just because I was forced to use Windows didn't make me give up on plain text because believe it or not, plain text still survives and quite well in the Windows environment.
So in regards to that fact, I still love and use plain text on a daily basis. I even write e-books in plain text. yeah I know, call me weird, but it is true! I actually do write my e-books using plain text and it works quite nicely. You don't need a fancy word processing program just to write an e-book. It can all be done with plain text.
Now I know what you're thinking right about now as you read this post. You're saying, "Plain text is so boring and there's nothing really appealing about it." Well while that might be true because there is no formatting, special characters and such, the fact is, plain text far surpasses every other document file format around due to the fact that it is future proof. You see, all those other file formats especially those found with word processing programs are always changing and being removed and replaced by yet other complex schemes that will eventually be replaced by yet other complex file formatting schemes. I just sit there and scratch my head and ask why?
Why go through all that trouble for fonts and styles when plain text is really all that you need anyway? Now you have to remember that back in the day, word processing was mainly done for printing, and saving a word processing document in a specialized format made sense because you could then reprint the document over and over again whenever you wanted.
However, today, we have e-books and other forms of digital reading that really don't require all that fancy formatting. A matter of fact, when you text someone, do you worry about the font size, the layout, the color and all that garbage? No you don't. You just write out the text and send it and that's it.
People read pages and pages of raw, plain text every single day and they have no problems doing it, so why should they have problems reading e-books in plain text?
Oh, I forgot. It's all about that eye candy such as fancy fonts and fancy layouts and colors and so on. Plain text just isn't appealing.
Well quite frankly to me it is very appealing because like I said, it is the simplest form of digital written communication there is on the planet. Not only that, but plain text hasn't changed at all since its inception. Since the inception of being able to write text on a computer there have been numerous document file formats that have come and gone and more of that will happen.
Many of the e-book formats that we use today will at some point be no longer used and replaced by yet something else, but in the background is the humblest of all file formats, plain text just waiting to be used and finally recognized for what it really is; a future proff form of writing that is simple and easy to use.
My experience with text has always been a positive one. I use plain text on a daily basis, and I rarely use any other file format unless someone sends me a file in another file format by which I will then convert into plain text especially if the file is a word processing document of some kind.
I have told many people that I use plain text, but I have also told them that they should be using it also and perhaps that's what I am trying to do through this site is to educate people on the many benefits of using plain text.
I will always use plain text for the forseable future and I don't think that I will ever stop using it, or even writing in it. It just makes perfect sense to use and like I keep on saying, it is the simplest form of digital written communication there is. My experience with plain text will always be a positive one.