What does “Human Readable” mean? Is it a misnomer

terminology

Two examples spring to mind:

  • One of the reasons that .Net programmers are encouraged to use .config files instead of the Windows Registry is that .config files are XML and therefore human-readable.

  • Similarly, JSON is sometimes considered human-readable compared with a proprietary format.

Are human-readable formats actually readable by humans? In the example of configuration data:

  1. The format doesn't change the underlying meaning of the information – in both cases, the data represents the same thing.
  2. Both registry and .config file are stored internally as a series 0s and 1s. To that extent, the underlying representaion is equally unreadable by humans.
  3. Both registry and .config file require a tool to read, format and display those 0s and 1s and convert them into a format that humans can read. In the case of configuration stored in the Windows Registry, this is a Registry Editor. In the case of XML it could be a text editor or XML reader. Either way, the tool makes the data readable, not the data format.

So, what is the difference between human-readable data formats and non-human-readable formats?

Best Answer

Human readable basically means that if the content is displayed by a program that lacks direct, specific awareness of that file's format, that there's at least a reasonable chance that a person can read and understand at least some of it.

Your basic point about the lack of a clear line of delineation is absolutely correct though --at one time I knew a guy who could diagnose problems with programs (mostly written in Fortran) often in five minutes or less -- going only from an octal core dump, without looking at the source code at all. For most people, that format would hardly qualify as "human readable", but obviously he was an exception...

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