Information about Text Based (computing)

Usually used in reference to a computer application, especially a computer game, a text-based application is one whose primary input and output are based on text rather than graphics. This does not mean that text-based applications do not have graphics, just that the graphics are secondary to the text.

History

Before the 1980s, most computers were text-based. The operator used the keyboard as the main input device to type in necessary commands into the terminal that could only display text on a low-resolution monochrome video monitor. The majority of end-user software was also written in text-based mode during this time. During this era, operating a computer was considered to be a challenging task because of the complexity of the text-based environment.

However, with the development of the graphical user interface and the improvement in hardware, many software engineers started adding graphics for their application. As a result, the pointing device that controls the coordination of the cursor on the screen became a primary input source, and the graphics displayed with some text on the screen became a primary output source.

In modern computers, the text-based software still exists in Unix and Linux operating systems. Some system commands on the Windows platform are also written as text-based programs because of their capabilities in handling powerful procedures with fewer system resources. Yet, the majority of the operations on the computer can be done without involving text-based software.

Benefits of text-based

Text-based applications run faster and offer more flexibility for interoperation of programs than software involving graphics does. Text-based applications run faster because the machine does not expend resources on processing the graphics, which generally requires more system resources than text does. For the same reason, text-based applications use memory more efficiently.

Text-based software often provides the user more control on the software by taking all the details of the instruction as the parameters or redirecting the outputs. As a result, text-based software can offer more powerful features than graphic-based software, such as combining the command using a pipeline that allows output of the first command to be used as the input of the next command. Using this, a complex operation can be accomplished in a single command line using a sequence of commands connected together in a pipeline.

In certain circumstances, text-based application offers faster user interaction than the graphic-based software does. Assuming that the user is fluent with typing, the user can enter faster commands faster than when using the graphical interface, because the users do not have to move their hands from the keyboard to enter the different command.

Limitation of text-based

Unlike the application with graphics, usually the text-based application does not look very user-friendly, especially for beginners. While the user may learn how to operate the software by simply playing around or navigating through given options, text-based system usually requires users to have a more detailed understanding of the commands, although most text-based applications have a menu or help system that shows the user some of the available options of the software.

Text-based has limitation on its input and output as well. The output generated in such way is not very attractive and can be difficult to follow compare to the output involving graphics. Any data that cannot be represented using the ASCII may not display properly on the output device.

Therefore, certain operations cannot be implemented using text-based software due its limitation of range in its input and output. An example is multimedia software such as Adobe Photoshop or Macromedia Flash.