This article was accepted into the corpus but its outbound wikilinks were never NER-processed — typical at the deepest BFS hop or when the run's entity cap was reached. No expansion funnel to show.
| TXT | |
|---|---|
| Name | TXT |
| Developer | Various |
| Released | Early computing era |
| Platform | Cross-platform |
| Language | Plain text |
| License | Various |
TXT
TXT is a designation used to denote plain text files and plain-text data interchange across computing platforms and protocols. It has been associated with early operating systems, character encodings, text editors, and file extension conventions that influenced software ecosystems from mainframes to personal computers. TXT-format artifacts appear in archival collections, standards documents, and vernacular usage within software projects and operating-system distributions.
The short label "TXT" emerged in early microcomputer and minicomputer cultures as an abbreviation for "text" and became entrenched through file extension conventions on systems such as MS-DOS, IBM PC DOS, CP/M, Digital Equipment Corporation systems like the PDP-11, and in documentation from vendors like Microsoft Corporation and IBM. It was reinforced by usage in utility names and commands in Unix-derived environments from organizations like AT&T Bell Labs and distributions such as BSD and GNU. The ".txt" suffix was codified in user guides, software manuals, and operating-system conventions produced by companies including Apple Computer and standards discussions involving ISO committees and stakeholders such as IETF working groups.
Plain-text files identified by the TXT label have historically relied on character-encoding standards developed by institutions like American National Standards Institute through ASCII and later by International Organization for Standardization through ISO/IEC 10646 and Unicode standards overseen by the Unicode Consortium. Line-ending conventions differ among platforms—CRLF lineage associated with Microsoft Windows, LF usage tied to Unix and derivatives, and CR legacy traces from Classic Mac OS. MIME type registrations and Internet standards from IETF assign the media type "text/plain" for plain-text interchange in protocols such as SMTP, HTTP, and FTP, with charset parameters referencing encodings like UTF-8 and ISO-8859-1. File metadata handling for TXT files interacts with packaging and archiving formats produced by projects such as ZIP (file format), tar, and container formats used in Apache ecosystems.
Text editors and viewers implement TXT handling across ecosystems: examples include Notepad from Microsoft Corporation; TextEdit from Apple Inc.; vi/Vim (originating with Bill Joy and Bram Moolenaar communities); Emacs from the Free Software Foundation; and lightweight editors bundled with distributions such as GNOME and KDE. Toolchains for development incorporate TXT files in version-control systems like Git (hosted by platforms such as GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket) and continuous-integration services from companies such as Travis CI and Jenkins. Programming-language ecosystems produced by organizations like Oracle Corporation (for Java), Python Software Foundation (for Python), and Node.js Foundation use TXT artifacts for README files, license texts, and configuration passed through package registries like npm and PyPI.
TXT-labeled files serve as human-readable documentation, configuration, and data interchange across projects developed by entities including Google, Facebook, Amazon (company), and academic centers such as MIT and Stanford University. They are used for changelogs in repositories, license disclosures like MIT License and GNU General Public License, and plain-text payloads in email systems operated by providers such as Microsoft Exchange and Gmail (Google). In publishing and digital humanities, TXT exports are common from tools developed at institutions like the Library of Congress and Project Gutenberg for preservation and text-mining workflows involving resources from JSTOR, arXiv, and archives managed by Internet Archive.
Despite their simplicity, TXT files can be vectors for social-engineering campaigns and exfiltration techniques discussed in advisories from organizations like CERT and NIST. Attackers have leveraged TXT-labeled payloads in phishing campaigns targeting services run by Salesforce or Zendesk, or as staged data for command-and-control signaling investigated in reports by vendors such as Symantec and Kaspersky Lab. Metadata leakage in TXT artifacts stored on platforms like Dropbox (service) or code hosts such as GitHub can expose secrets; mitigation guidance is published by entities like OWASP and regulatory frameworks referenced by European Commission and NIST publications. Encryption and integrity measures recommended by IETF protocols (for example, S/MIME and TLS) are applied to plain-text transport to protect confidentiality when TXT content traverses public networks.
Plain-text labeled TXT has influenced software culture, open-source communities, and documentation practices championed by projects like Debian and Free Software Foundation, and by influential figures such as Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, and Ken Thompson. TXT artifacts underpin README traditions, changelog rituals, and plain-text blogging movements embodied by platforms like Medium and static-site generators originating from communities around Jekyll and Hugo. Linguistically, TXT files preserve orthographic and encoding histories important to projects such as Unicode Consortium initiatives and corpora curated by Google Books and national libraries including the British Library and Bibliothèque nationale de France.
Category:Computer file formats