What is "plain text"?

[Guest jbinner]

attached .txt file is what they are referring to. Something VOID of ANY formatting. Most people that upload are able to include a README.txt and this is what we are talking about in this case.

[Guest lmoelleb]

ASCII, ANSI, UTF-8, and UTF-16 (there are hundreds more of course, but these are probably the relevant ones) are all encodinges that can be used in .txt files.Encodings specify how the characters are written to a byte stream, they do not have anything to do with formatting.Some people only refers to ASCII files as "plain text" as they will load on all systems - at the cost of only being able to store a small subset of the characters available on the computer.If you are only referring to the lack of formatting when you designates something "Plain text", I guess any code page of the ones I mentioned will do, and I'll probably go with UTF-8 as the least bad choise.I am aware most people are able to produce a .txt file, just like I am aware that most people unfortunately have no clue about what the limitations of text files are.

[Chase 303]

The very reason for us requiring txt files. It's universal.Is it so hard to believe that is the reason why we require it? We are here for the hobby, not to get caught up in someones technicalities.

[Guest lmoelleb]

I am just trying to figure out if you have any restrictions on what encoding you consider "plain text file" so I know if I can use a character like "

[Tom Allensworth 1,532]

ASCII is the encoding we require.

[Guest lmoelleb]

Until now I have been prefering readme.html files in my packages, to avoid the problems associated with text files encodings.But I have now had uploads rejected due to a missing text file so I guess I have to include one.Unfortunately the instructions are not specifying what "plain text" is.I am aware of the following encoding options that might or might not be considered "plain text":1) ASCII: Loads on all computers, but unable to store for example the "

[Guest lmoelleb]

Thanks