Re: Good beginner doc-hacking task: clear-text vs. cleartext vs. clear text vs. plaintext etc..

> > My understanding is/was that plaintext is data meant for encryption, after which it becomes ciphertext. Cleartext is data not meant for encryption.
>
> That's my understanding as well, but it's not standardized anywhere and
> scanning relevant RFC's didn't provide any real guidance.
>
> > If we tidy this up, consider adding glossary entries.
>
> +1

I can attempt to split out cleartext and plaintext entries if there's
appetite for that, but I suspect that may actually confuse things
rather than clarifying them. Instead, I propose the following glossary
entries to define the way in which we're using the terms:

plain text
Unformatted, human-readable text that consists of a sequence of
printable characters in a character encoding such as UTF-8.

cleartext
Unencrypted data; data that exists in an unprotected, readable format
during storage or transmission. Sometimes used as a synonym for
plaintext; the input to an encryption algorithm.

>
> > There are three occurrences of "non-plain-text" that you changed to
> > "non-plain text". This feels wrong, since to me the hyphen ties stronger
> > than the space. I would read that as meaning something like "compound text".
> > I'd suggest that you rewrite those sentences to avoid the construct.
>
> non-plain-text was never good for non-native speakers, and this didn't improve
> it. I agree with trying to rewrite the sentences to avoid this construct.
>

Agreed - I'll find alternative wording.

Regards,
--
Karen