Glossary for Geospatial Science

ASCII file:  A text-only file.  Documents in most word processors are not text-only files, since they include binary header information and formatting characters.  However most word processors import so-called ASCII files and have an Export, Save/Text-only, or print-to-file utility that converts a document into an “ASCII” format.  However, these files are not true ASCII files because they may include the characters from 128-255.  The characters in this range are different between platforms such as PCs and Macintoshes and even from font to font with a platform, and are not part of the standard 7-bit ASCII code.  (See also: ASCII.)