Rich Text vs. Plain Text
- Plain Text: Contains only raw letters, numbers, and punctuation with zero styling or media (.txt, ASCII).
- Rich Text: Allows visual emphasis, custom fonts, tables, alignment, and embedded media or files.
Common Forms of Rich Text
- Rich Text Format (RTF): A legacy cross-platform document format developed by Microsoft that stores basic text formatting tags.
- Rich Text Editors (RTE): Browser-based visual editors (like TinyMCE or CKEditor) that let users write and format text visually while generating underlying HTML or structured code.
- Structured JSON / Portable Text: Modern content management systems (such as Contentful or Sanity) store rich text as abstract syntax trees or data objects rather than rigid documents, making the content reusable across web, mobile, and AI applications.