TXT vs PDF: Simple Text or Portable Document?
TXT and PDF represent two opposite philosophies about what a document file should even contain. TXT stores nothing but raw characters — no fonts, no formatting, no layout. PDF locks in a complete, fixed visual presentation down to the exact pixel. Neither is a general-purpose default; each is the right tool for a specific, fairly narrow job.
TXT: nothing but the words
A plain text file contains character data and essentially nothing else — no bold, no italics, no fonts, no images, no page layout. That extreme simplicity is exactly the point: a TXT file opens identically in any text editor on any operating system, takes up almost no storage space, and is trivially easy for other software to read and process programmatically, since there's no formatting complexity to parse around. This makes TXT the natural choice for configuration files, simple notes, code snippets, or any content where the formatting genuinely doesn't matter and maximum simplicity and compatibility do.
PDF: everything about the presentation, locked in
A PDF captures fonts, exact spacing, images, page breaks, and overall layout, and renders that presentation identically regardless of device or software. This is the right tool when how a document looks is part of what's being communicated — a formatted report, a resume, an invoice, anything where layout and visual presentation genuinely matter and need to survive being opened on an unknown device with unknown software installed.
Why you can't really use one for the other's job
Converting a heavily formatted document into TXT strips out everything except the raw words — fonts, images, layout, all of it, gone. That's a real loss for a formatted report or resume, but a complete non-issue for something like a simple list or a code file that never needed formatting in the first place. Going the other direction, wrapping plain text in PDF for something that never needed layout information (a quick note, a config file passed between systems) just adds unnecessary complexity and file size for a document that gains nothing from a locked-in visual presentation.
A simple way to decide
If formatting, layout, or visual presentation genuinely matter, or the document needs to look the same on any device: PDF. If the content is pure text with no formatting need — notes, code, simple lists, data meant for another program to read — TXT, for its simplicity and universal compatibility. Most everyday documents (letters, reports, resumes) belong as PDF once finished; TXT is for the narrower case where formatting was never part of the point.
When plain text does need to become a properly formatted, shareable document — turning quick notes into something presentable, for instance — TXT to PDF handles that conversion directly, adding a clean, readable layout to text that started with none.