Lihttekstis

Lihttekstis is an Estonian term meaning "in plain text." It describes content that consists solely of unformatted characters, without markup, styling, or other embedded formatting. In computing, lihttekstis usually refers to plain text files or data streams that contain only characters, line breaks, and basic control codes.

Plain text is typically encoded in ASCII or Unicode encodings such as UTF-8, allowing broad compatibility across platforms and programs. Common file extensions for plain text include .txt, but not all plain text files use a specific extension. Plain text is also a common presentation mode for emails, configuration files, logs, source code, and data interchange formats like CSV.

Lihttekstis is contrasted with formatted or rich text formats such as HTML, RTF, Markdown, or word processor documents, which include styling, layout, or embedded objects. The simplicity of plain text makes it easier to parse programmatically and to version with tools like source control, while it limits the ability to convey complex presentation.

Advantages of using plain text include portability, small size, and broad support across software and systems. Limitations involve the lack of inherent formatting, which means styling, typography, and complex layouts must be handled by separate processes or conventions.

See also: plain text, ASCII, Unicode, UTF-8, markup languages.