Formats

This site discusses three formats.

• Unicode

  • Any sequence of Unicode Scalar Values, encoded with a standard Unicode encoding form.

• Basic Text

  • This is intended to realize the intuitive phrases "text" or "plain text" which are used in many contexts. It excludes control characters and other content unnecessary or impractical for text.

• Terminal Support

  • This describes a language supporting ANSI-style terminal codes that can be layered on top of Basic Text.

• Restricted Text

  • Restricted Text is a hypothetical format at this time.
  • Like Basic Text, but aims to reduce visual ambiguity by trading off some support for historical scripts, multiple-script text, formatting, and symbols.

The background information contains rationale and source information.