Tavatekstis

Tavatekstis is the Estonian term for plain text, referring to a form of text that consists solely of characters without formatting commands. It does not include styles such as bold or italics, nor layout instructions like font size or color. In plain text, line breaks and whitespace are preserved as written, and the content is typically encoded in ASCII or Unicode (for example UTF-8), ensuring broad interoperability across different systems and software.

Plain text is portable and human-readable, making it well suited for source code, configuration files, logs, email communication, and data interchange. It is also favored in environments where automated processing or version control is important, because diffs and merges are straightforward and predictable. Its simplicity facilitates long-term accessibility and archival stability.

Limitations of tavatekstis include the absence of presentation and structure beyond basic line breaks. It cannot convey visual layout, colors, fonts, or multimedia without using a separate mechanism or a markup language. While plain text can be transformed by programs or converted into formatted formats, it relies on external interpretation for presentation.

Many users extend plain text with lightweight markup languages such as Markdown, AsciiDoc, or reStructuredText. These are still plain text but provide simple, machine-readable cues for formatting, enabling richer documents while preserving portability.