For the purpose of archiving, I think it makes sense to make a large text file that restricts to the 255 ASCII characters and controls. One is because it is very unlikely for formatting distortion to occur. The other is that it is broad enough to articulate things like mathematical equations, and phonics. Albeit, it's very limited. It's not rich like UTF-8 and so on.
But I have another reason that's a lot more woo-woo. The Crabwood crop formation, I *never* forgot that thing, and the amount of information that has surfaced from that one formation has blown my mind. I tried to harasse Farsight crew to remote view it (and forumites, and myself, next maybe I'll try to get Solace) but I never had a lot of success.
But I still believe this thing is a big piece of the puzzle. I also believe the genuine alien messages are typically multi-purpose. They have layers of purpose. One will be an apparent and obvious presentation, another will be cryptographic as if to say: "look we couldn't be just random idiots" and other layers will pertain to different timelines to hold relevance to something like 1980, and then 2030, and then 2050.
Anyways, the crop circle was all in ASCII, 255 characters.
And here I see all these weird formatting glitches and problems that all tend to go away when I stick to an archive that restricts to ASCII . . . and I go "whooooaaa. Did they know already that this was gonna happen?"
I hope that makes sense, thanks.
-Manny.