Comically the use of curl | bash managed to shoehorn them in there, and there were the occasional terminal escape characters that could do funny and sometimes mischievous things.
There used to be something of a game of making specific files that would change screen colors or play songs off terminal bells, etc, tailored for specific terminals or command prompt windows. I remember a few short animated sequences using various backspaces and colors that only really worked if you could expect the text to be loaded at specific baud rates or in specific BBS software.
It's always interesting to me that these plaintext sites are flagged as "insecure" and "risky" by modern browsers. I don't have a good solution, but it reminds me of [1]
They are insecure, because your ISP can change website responses and text format doesn't protect from that. So basically browser can't guarantee that you're looking at original web server response.
Turns out text files are a binary format also, with any number of encodings, ever more binary as UTF8 grows, requiring constant updates, hidden by the OS. Text files are just the name for a renderer built in into every OS.
So what exactly distinguishes them? The OS knows how to render them? It's just a linear list of characters? The reliance on a fixed font to allow some form of layout or positioning? Good basis for embedded DSL's, like Markdown?
Don't forget they are a binary format also. Oh, I just said that. I anticipate the day UTF8 will be a fond memory of a big mistake we made in our youth, that held us back for decades.
Don't forget that all of IT is a shit show sprinkled over with dollar paint, much like alchemy was. We don't yet know what the formation in Information is.
I enjoy the (unironic?) juxtaposition of ‘use plain text files because they are universally understood and will still be accessible in the future’ with ‘stop writing things on paper like it's the 1900s and put everything on computers’.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 34.3 ms ] threadThere used to be something of a game of making specific files that would change screen colors or play songs off terminal bells, etc, tailored for specific terminals or command prompt windows. I remember a few short animated sequences using various backspaces and colors that only really worked if you could expect the text to be loaded at specific baud rates or in specific BBS software.
[1](https://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2018/08/07/securing-sites...)
Or if you prefer magnet/ed2k download links: https://pastebin.com/UZNDd564
Interesting video story: https://youtu.be/9aHfK8EUIzg (2016)
Data site: https://xd.saul.pw/data
So what exactly distinguishes them? The OS knows how to render them? It's just a linear list of characters? The reliance on a fixed font to allow some form of layout or positioning? Good basis for embedded DSL's, like Markdown?
Don't forget they are a binary format also. Oh, I just said that. I anticipate the day UTF8 will be a fond memory of a big mistake we made in our youth, that held us back for decades.
Don't forget that all of IT is a shit show sprinkled over with dollar paint, much like alchemy was. We don't yet know what the formation in Information is.