Editing Plaintext (section)

==Overview==
With the advent of [[computing]], the term ''plaintext'' expanded beyond human-readable documents to mean any data, including binary files, in a form that can be viewed or used without requiring a key or other decryption device.  Information—a message, document, file, etc.—if to be communicated or stored in an unencrypted form is referred to as plaintext.

Plaintext is used as input to an [[encryption algorithm]]; the output is usually termed [[ciphertext]], particularly when the algorithm is a [[cipher]]. [[Codetext]] is less often used, and almost always only when the algorithm involved is actually a [[code]]. Some systems use multiple layers of [[encryption]], with the output of one encryption algorithm becoming "plaintext" input for the next.