E-text

	Email		Print
	Bookmark		Link

E-text

An e-text (from "electronic
Electronics

Electronics refers to the flow of charge through nonmetal electrical conductor , whereas electrical refers to the flow of charge through metal electrical conductor....
text"; sometimes written as etext) is, generally, any text-based information that is available in a digitally encoded human-readable format and read by electronic means, but more specifically it refers to files in the ASCII

ASCII

American Standard Code for Information Interchange , is a coding standard that can be used for interchanging information, if the information is expressed mainly by the written form of English words....
character encoding

Character encoding

A character encoding system consists of a code that pairs a sequence of character from a given character set with something else, such as a sequence of natural numbers, octet or electrical pulses, in order to facilitate the transmission of data through telecommunication networks and/or Computer data storage of Character in compute...
.

E-text has the broad meaning of something electronic that represents words, a binary

Binary file

A binary file is a computer file which may contain any type of data, encoded in Binary numeral system form for computer storage and processing purposes; for example, Document file format containing formatted text....
(or digital

Digital

Discussion

Ask a question about 'E-text'

Start a new discussion about 'E-text'

Answer questions from other users

Full Discussion Forum

Encyclopedia

ASCII

Character encoding

Binary file

Digital

A digital system uses discrete values, usually but not always symbolized numerically to represent information for input, processing, transmission, storage, etc....
) version of a published work of text. Indeed, there are ASCII textbooks available. These are now referred to as, and the term is often used synonymously, an e-book

E-book

An e-book is the digital media equivalent of a conventional printed book. Such documents are usually read on personal computers, or on dedicated computer hardware devices known as e-book readers or e-book devices....
.

The term e-text is used for the more limited case of data in ASCII text format, while the more general e-book can be in a specialized (and, at times, proprietary

Proprietary software

Proprietary software is a term coined by advocates of the free software movement to describe computer software which is the legal property of one party....
) file format. An ebook is commonly bundled by a publisher

Publishing

Publishing is the process of production and dissemination of literature or information – the activity of making information available for public view....
for distribution (as an ebook, an ezine

Ezine

An ezine is a periodic publication distributed by email or posted on a website. Ezines are typically tightly focused on a subject area....
, or an internet

Internet

The Internet is a global network of interconnected computers, enabling users to share information along multiple channels. Typically, a computer that connects to the Internet can access information from a vast array of available server and other computers by moving information from them to the computer's local memory....
newspaper

Newspaper

A newspaper is a publication containing news, information and advertising, usually printed on low-cost paper called newsprint. General-interest newspapers often feature articles on Politics, crime, business, art/entertainment, society and sports....
), whereas e-text is distributed in ASCII (or plain text

Plain text

In computing, plain text is a term used for an ordinary "unformatted" sequential file readable as textual material without much processing.The Character encoding has traditionally been either ASCII, one of its many derivatives such as ISO/IEC 646 etc., or sometimes EBCDIC....
). Metadata relating to the text is sometimes included with e-text (though it appears more frequently with ebooks).

Typically, e-text have some control character

Control character

In computing and telecommunication, a control Grapheme or non-printing character is a code point in a character encoding, that does not in itself represent a written symbol....
s such as tabs

Indentation

English An indentation can mean two things:*To make notches in something or form deep recesses in a coastline for instance.*To place text farther to the right to separate it from surrounding text....
, line feeds

Newline

In computing, a newline is a special character or sequence of characters signifying the end of a line of text. The name comes from the fact that the next character after the newline will appear on a new line?that is, on the next line below the text, immediately proceeding the newline....
and carriage return

Carriage return

Originally, carriage return was the term for the control character in Baudot code on a Teleprinter for end of line return to beginning of line and did not include line feed....
s without any embedded information such as font

Typeface

In typography, a typeface is a set of one or more fonts, in one or more sizes, designed with stylistic unity, each comprising a coordinated set of glyphs....
information, hyperlink

Hyperlink

In computing, a hyperlink, usually shortened to link, is a directly followable reference within a hypertext document.The area from which the hyperlink can be activated is called its anchor; its target is what the link points to, which may be another location within the same page or document, another page or document, or a...
s, or inline image

Image

An image is an artifact, usually two-dimensional , that has a similar appearance to some subject —usually a physical object or a person....
s. E-text files are files with generally a one-to-one correspondence between the bytes and ordinary readable characters such as letters and digits. Sometimes e-text files contain more than ASCII characters if they are encoded by East-Asian encoding (such as Shift JIS or unicode

Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard allowing computers to consistently represent and manipulate Character expressed in most of the world's writing systems....
). If the e-texts are written in unicode, a UTF standard (such as UTF-8

UTF-8

UTF-8 is a Variable-width encoding character encoding for Unicode. It is able to represent any character in the Unicode standard, yet the initial encoding of byte codes and character assignments for UTF-8 is backward compatibility with ASCII....
) defines the encoding format. Although e-text files are generally human-readable, they can of course be used for data storage by computer programs. Note that a webpage with formatted text is not an e-text specifically, but the HTML

HTML

HTML, an Acronym and initialism of HyperText Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for Web pages. It provides a means to describe the structure of text-based information in a document?by denoting certain text as links, headings, paragraphs, lists, and so on?and to supplement that text with interactive forms, embedded '...
source code

Source code

In computer science, source code is any collection of statements or declarations written in some human-readable computer programming language....
is; whether a file is an e-text thus may depend on the level on which one is considering it.

Most programming language

Programming language

A programming language is a machine-readable artificial language designed to express computations that can be performed by a machine, particularly a computer....
s require source files to be stored in etext, as do HTML

HTML

Text editor

A text editor is a type of software application used for editing plain text files.Text editors are often provided with operating systems or software development packages, and can be used to change configuration files and programming language source code....
. An e-text file can have the MIME

MIME

Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions is an Internet standard that extends the format of electronic mail to support:* Text in character sets other than ASCII...
type "text/plain", often with suffixes indicating an encoding. Common encodings for e-text include Unicode

Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard allowing computers to consistently represent and manipulate Character expressed in most of the world's writing systems....
UTF-8

UTF-8

UTF-16/UCS-2

In computing, UTF-16 is a Variable-width encoding character encoding for Unicode, capable of encoding the entire Unicode repertoire.The encoding form maps each character to a sequence of 16-bit Word ....
, ISO/IEC 8859

ISO/IEC 8859

ISO/IEC 8859 is a joint International Organization for Standardization and International Electrotechnical Commission standard for 8-bit character encodings for use by computers....
and ASCII

ASCII

Unix

Unix is a computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of American Telephone & Telegraph employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson , Dennis Ritchie, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna....
, Macintosh

Macintosh

File:Imac alu.pngMacintosh, commonly shortened to Mac, is a brand name which covers several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc....
and Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of software operating systems and graphical user interfaces produced by Microsoft. Microsoft first introduced an operating environment named Windows in November 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces ....
or DOS

DOS

DOS, short for "Disk Operating System", is a shorthand term for several closely related operating systems that dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995, or until about 2000 if one includes the partially DOS-based Microsoft Windows versions Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows Me....
computers can be problematic, as each platform uses different control characters.

The added functionality (such as searching

Search algorithm

In computer science, a search algorithm, broadly speaking, is an algorithm that takes a problem as input and returns a solution to the problem, usually after evaluating a number of possible solutions....
within the text) and easy portability make e-text popular. Hand-held computers (such as Personal Digital Assistant

Personal digital assistant

A personal digital assistant is a handheld computer, also known as a palmtop computer. Newer PDAs also have both color screens and audio capabilities, enabling them to be used as mobile phones, , web browsers, or portable media players....
s (PDAs)) allow a large number of e-texts to be carried. These devices also allow the e-text to be read on the move more conveniently than text printed on paper

Paper

Paper is thin material mainly used for writing upon, printing upon or packaging. It is produced by pressing together moist fibers, typically cellulose pulp derived from wood, rags or grasses, and drying them into flexible sheets....
.

Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg, abbreviated as PG, is a volunteer effort to digitize, archive and distribute cultural works, as founder Michael Hart said "To encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks."....
and other various digital libraries

Digital library

A digital library is a library in which collections are stored in digital formats and accessible by computers. The digital content may be stored locally, or accessed remotely via computer networks....
are using e-text.

E-text

See also

External links