Talk:Binary and text files

Hi, I don't think you should move binary (software) to binary (computing) because it actually discusses binaries, ie compiled applications, whereas binary (computing) sounds like it's going to discuss how computers use 1s and 0s... Evercat 00:35 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)

First my apology to have forgot discussing naming issue first at talkpage. I think binary file is more accurate term. What do you think? -- Taku 00:47 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)

If this article will predominantly be talking about binaries (as opposed to source code or any other form of text file), then I concur: binary file is a better name. -- Wapcaplet 00:50 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)

No, actually I think we need a broader article. After knowing plain text has more about the characterstic of binary file, we may want to have a combined article probably called binary and text file or something. Any thought? -- Taku 00:55 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)

We probably do need a broader article. There isn't too much to say about binary files (aside from the fact that they're not human-readable, for whatever reason). In this context, the word "binary" is more of a piece of terminology, rather than a person/place/thing that needs an encyclopedia article. If anything, it should maybe be incorporated into File format or some related article. Some file formats are considered binary, yadda yadda. -- Wapcaplet 01:02 2 Jun 2003 (UTC) (Though, "human-readable" is pretty vague. Some humans, myself included, are capable of reading binary files and occasionally understanding them :) -- Wapcaplet

I was thinking of what title might be good. As people know, I tend to merge small articles into one big article because I believe Wikipedia is not a dictionary, so we don't want an article that just defines the title of the article. I am not sure file format is a good article to take about a distinction between binary and text files. Actually I want to dicuss for example fopen function of C, which you need to specify a file is binary or text. I mean this topic distinction between binary and text can be expanded a lot more. So after all, to avoid making one big article, an independent article called binary and text files seems fine. Any other idea? -- Taku 01:20 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)

You're probably right. Evercat 01:22 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Sounds OK. Personally I'd stick it under File format, but you make a good point that there is the need to distinguish between these two broad classifications of file types. Some ideas:

• Text files almost always refers to strict ASCII, though I suppose any information which can be interpreted according to some standardized character code (unicode, UTF, or whatever) would qualify. Informally, as has already been established, usually means "human readable," though there are times when ASCII can be used for other things (ASCII art, for instance) which doesn't really fall under the 'readable' category. Another way of looking at it is that you don't need any special software to view them (though, the definition of 'special software' could be hairy. I get sick of trying to explain to people that you don't need to have Dreamweaver in order to edit an HTML file! :)
• Binary files could be practically anything. As already pointed out, all files on a computer are binary in the strictest sense (text files are just special cases). Binary can be compiled executable code, object code or libraries, images, media such as audio or video, ZIP archives, or you name it.
• In the context of downloading software, you often see "source code" versus "compiled binary executable", which is another apt analogy.

-- Wapcaplet 01:39 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)

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Hi. Um, I have a slight problem with this article because it is rather Unix-centric. In Unix systems, (traditionally), there was a very clear distinction between text files and binary files primarily owing to the ASCII standard, ie: by (unix) definition, a file couldn't be a text file if it contained any character with a byte value over 127. Under Macintosh, (and Windows???) systems, an extended, 256 character encoding was always used. It was completely accurate on a Macintosh to refer to a file as text so long as it was human readable. Today, the point is perhaps mostly moot, as Mac OS X is now Unix-based, and Unicode has become the standard, but I think it still confuses Mac and Windows people today when a Unixer talks about text files as being different from, say, a file that makes use of curly quotes or other high-bit characters in a particular encoding. AdmN 18:23, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)