[TECH] [2021. II] Why plaintext?

If plaintext is a suitable option - almost invariably it is the best option. In no particular order, a few of the great advantages of plaintext.

Searchability and manipulation

The ease of search and manipulation of plaintext files is without rival. Consequently, one has a myriad of great utilities (grep, awk, vim, to name a few) at one's disposal for those tasks.

Universality and durability

Various formats and the associated software come and go. Plaintext is here to stay - it is ubiquitous across all systems and it doesn't require any special (and certainly not proprietary) software for access.

Privacy and security

Plaintext gives full control over data and by eschewing dependency on any particular software the owner has full control over its security and encryption.

Easy and fast to use

WYSIWYG done right. Open any editor (although even this is optional) and start typing.