TEXTS
Text files
As explained in the book "The art of UNIX programming", one of the maxims or pieces of advice from Doug McIlroy, one of the fathers of UNIX, says:
"Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface."
I consider it necessary to reflect on the great importance of the text format in programming. This implies that our programs should read text data, either directly from the command line or from external files, and create new text files. Text is readable by humans and machines. It is the ideal system for packaging our data and results in free software environments because it allows us to open, study and modify easily.
A complex CAD file can be a text file (a DXF is text), or an .STL surface, or an IFC-type BIM file. A doctoral thesis or book formatted in .TEX is text. Even a .DOCX is text if we unzip it. Or a KML or KMZ file (a KMZ is a compressed KML). The source code of all programming languages are text files.
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to be continued