Also called "character based," it refers to handling text and not graphics. Simple charts and illustrations may be drawn, but they are limited to a set of special characters that are strung together to make up lines (see
OEM font). DOS was text based and Unix is inherently text-based in contrast to Windows and Mac, which are graphics based.
Text-Based Screens
Text-based computer screens display a fixed set of rows and columns, typically between 25 and 50 rows of 80 or more characters that are also fixed in size. In contrast, graphics-based screens provide a matrix of pixels that are entirely addressable, allowing for any font size or graphic object to be created.
Text-Based Documents
Text based also refers to documents that contain only text, such as program source code, batch and shell scripts as well as HTML and XML files. Text-based documents are readable in any text editor and most word processors. In contrast, machine language files, multimedia files and all database files (except text-based XML databases) contain binary codes that a text application cannot decipher. See
text-based search,
ASCII file and
XML.